Their Father's Tears Poem by Robert Rorabeck

There will be no more days that flash in the yard,
The orchids in the trenches getting bigger as they grow-
The cicadas in the jugulars of lime trees,
And the chorus of young kittens up there all but learning to
Climb,
With the last prizes of the Ferris Wheel’s gold fish
Decorating the kaleidoscopes of armpits and leaves-
Gifts from the fair that has already burned away-
Windswept newspapers cluttering the grottos of the housewives,
While the washing machines revolve and fibrillate,
And the sky writers scribble so much promises over the perpetual
Lactates motioning in the sea, while mountains rise the other way:
They go up a good distance just to get a look down:
They see a world of tourisms beneath them, but before they can
Cry, their sorrows metamorphosis into the auburn joys of the gods
And the stewardesses they have captured in the mazes of
Aspen spangling their laps- an adolescent and silver cloister
Grown up there after the fire in whose knuckles the
Grizzly bears gather, opening chapbooks of mouths,
Having hibernated through all of the
Starry-eyed neighborhood’s fireworks, waiting for their father’s tears.