Through The Growing Afternoon Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Almost three in Arizona,
And the sun goes here steadily and dry
Where used to flow a Precambrian sea,
Where ancient lips plucked thoughtlessly,
And nuzzled in the brine: Now there are
Wondrous houses in the coral nooks,
And people in them, which is almost a miracle,
And people in the sky as well, and stewardesses
Serving them expensive liquor in plastic cups
So the ice doesn’t wake up infants sated from
A mother’s breast. They pass over me and all of
The uncounted forest, like diamond tree frogs
Leaping from the sun’s branches;
And I know that I could love any of them, if
They were to come down in some predestined fireball,
I would step outside and catch her as she fell just like
Alice down a wishing well, and invite her inside for
Holidays, through those doors which shrink and
Change with the seasons and with cuckoldry.
If we both sat unquestionably still, after I served
Her the drink of her choice, then out in the yard we might
Say to have seen old loved ones playing recklessly
In the fleeting gowns of leaves, but that would be our
Choice; and gathering our strength, after what might
Be perceived as an uncountable repose, we would toast
Each other and think up new jobs, and watch the other
People strangely leaping through the cloudless sky,
And wonder thanklessly why they should go to and fro
In their gleeful commerce. Then, after the fireworks,
And the watermelons and tearful glances over the
Next-door neighbor’s wall, we would watch the waterfall
All the way down into the pregnant belly of the valley,
Where all the maidens bath nakedly with thieves and salt miners,
And then to each other again, as a man comes to a woman
After a long day of burdens, reach across the impassable
Bodies and remember how in that day we fell into each
Others arms through the correlations by which divine
Providence perambulated through the growing afternoon.