The Wounded Baseball Games Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Songs in lines flung by hands that cannot fish—
And, maybe, do not love, of course—
Except for the little fairies on the cliffs,
That come in jubilee across the reddened saddles
And dig up arrowheads and diminutive
Ferris wheels from the earth—
A tiara over the savaged garden my father's
Thousand horses trampled—
Where my scarred aunt now sleeps, wounded in
A kidney disease of amusement parks—
This gentle flood I send as a model from my hands—
A taxidermist's fable—Without eyes,
Look at the parks,
And lead the pretty girls past the cemeteries of
Their grandmothers—
And high into the basins of ice-cream trucks that sing
Like angels in the breathless afternoons—
High above the wounded baseball games—
And the flea markets shelled by interstates.