The Young Couples Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The days peel out underneath the power lines;
And it is so disgusting that I finished a bottle while the
Time changed,
And I wrote the most heinous of things that I can’t
Even remember to young men who are not real:
I cursed and put down my sick muse, because she was the
Only one I could write for:
And then I gave it away like serpent poison to little children
To use in their milk,
When outside the store the sky grew angry and picked up
Husks of corn and made them dance in the sky:
It was a hypnotic dance that can never leave me, the kind of
Thing my grandfather was known to describe to me,
If I was ever listening: and afterward the store was silent
And a chicken came by and danced for soldiers who laughed
At it until they found their women
Who were coming to them from the other direction;
And then the young lovers embraced, and kissed and petted
Tattoos;
And I noticed a jackrabbit in the grass across the ditch:
It standing there beneath a rusting mailbox, its ears perked up
Like bottle rockets, and it did not notice me,
Gazing as it did at the young couples who were now dancing.