To The Sky Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Bones in a white box,
Bones in the sea: bones in a fish, in a bird,
Or in the sky:
Thrown up like luck over the mountebanks of
Insouciant lions,
Hypnotized with the animals in the feral churches
Of ruby glass,
While the water is always falling, falling
Like the coattails of weather balloons over the vast
And effortlessly tall jungles;
Only unto all of the mouths of minds have moved
Away,
Hibernation with the vast fairgrounds of northern
Peninsulas
Into the vast and populous frescos of
Teaming glaciers who call to them the tiny biplanes like
Cattle,
Until so many pilots have landed into the tundra
Of borderless anachronisms
Upon whose missing ribs the butterflies sleep like resplendent
Badges;
And they flutter once more, remembering how they once
Flew,
And how once before all of this they changed so resplendently
Into the changing room that ultimately led them to the sky.