The Unlucky Poem Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Tricks of other planets stain her lips.
Even though she isn’t far away enough not
To hear the emptiness that I am not crying-
There are no echoes,
But clarifying recalcitrance,
And the astronauts have come to see her with
Bright auburn eyes and dimpled chins;
Discovering they can breathe deep-in her
Perfumes, they have taken off their helmets and
Shaken their heads:
High school football stars, monkey chested
Valedictorians;
Brushing her hair they think up adds to trim her
Tree,
And I am up there on the grade of roof
Melting like an ice-berg who hasn’t done in enough
Ships before the unresigning summertime,
A little glass warming my empty hand;

And you are in your dress twirling with just the
First glimmers of grandmotherhood in your eyes,
And all around us the city is busy going out to dinner,
Turning to meet each others’ broadsides,
Driving your cousins to the movies, and looking
Softly fine. I can lay my head above that banister
Like a saint nobody has the energy to believe in, while
The trains move the business-class hobos out to sea, the waves
Coming in to greet them brush in time-
I’d said before that I love you or her;
A relative, a sister obsessed with rockets, but that was just
The sobering silliness of the pass, because you are all
For him, like a music box revolving beside the window,
Glass still greatly bubbling, trying to make it home on time.