Their Emerging Yesterday Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Crumbling green pigeons dive for the afternoon
Above the avocado tenements; it is a humid pistil
Who chalks the atmosphere,
Drapes it on the shoulders of little girls pretending to
Eat what comes out of the earth;
They can pretend all weekend in their little corners
And not have to worry about class,
The presumptive eyes of boys who are eagerly waiting
For their first hint of bloom;
They would squash it if they could, and their shoulders
Grow vermillion capes,
And on the concrete numbers trees move in invisible
Groves,
And they can leap through them like robbing Samurai
And say to each other whispering in curls better words
Than I could imagine,
Things that only little girls know latchkeyed for the weekend
Waiting for the slow tumult of the drying universe
For the heavenly bodies to emerge and pulse over scar-
Less lips- They are a post-Victorian novel, and right now
In an emerald dusk where all the hues of this color go to
Sleep on the back of molting insects,
They know everything- And they can go on like this perfect,
No matter whatever happens, they will have the secret rhymes
Involving one another’s names,
And the very quiet peep shows of subtle green birthmarks,
There a teal inlet on the sleeveless shoulder,
Or along the running backyard stream of a softly skipping thigh,
As their eyes fall along through the drowsy copper of ancient yards,
Of what will come to be their emerging yesterday.