To Believe A Thing Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Slipping through the abandoning collisions of children,
While all of the adults have to sit a spell,
Because all they have learned about the world is that it
Is up to no good;
And what they have trained to feel comfortable with,
Besides,
Has slipped out of their roofs and learned to swim like
Blue gills into cemeteries;
And even before the sun gets risen, the hobos and winos
Are there sharing their plots, unshaven,
Headstones and cenotaphs as pillows- the highways of
A feral make believe the concessions of their mothers,
Like the trails that they must follow to fully unwind from
Their jobs,
While the other larks of men continue to built preposterously
Above and beneath them these fleeting things
In disastrous slights of hand made to impress the ladies,
When what should be imagined is all of their fine lips uncorking
The romance of the cheap spirits in the vermilion gutters
That coil through the drainage of its ugly make-believe,
The snakes and devils speaking in the tongues of weeds and wildflowers,
While those of us who are with them never have to believe a thing.