The Tidal Sea Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Unseen, yet to be caught by
Any god, the children play in the
Gurgling streams which don’t know
Any exact language;
Like infants they flow down
From the mountain’s womb
To gather and sleep in the early lakes
Where young lovers neck in the
Willows’ bowers,
And ladies with delicate parasols
Row out to feed the swans
Who gather like parenthesis
Encapsulating the baby-blue skiff;
Though further down where the
Adolescent rapids rebel and spit
On the rocks they trounce upon,
Where wayward suicides swing
In the spray,
The white bears’ paws like spears
Drag the floundering life out
From the shallow misuse,
And wolves attack the bloated
Carcasses of buck and doe,
Only to fall away again into
Gentler, wizening cataracts
Revealing the silver and buckskins
Of lost explorers many years ago-
This fans out like a grandmother’s
Hand upon her offspring,
The seepage of a gathering life,
A great wound of everglades
Which tiptoes through high grass
And disappears into the tidal sea.