To The Waves Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I farted along in Saturday school,
Until I was expelled, and rejected from the clicks of
High school drama. Still, I came faithfully
Everyday just to sneak back across the canal,
Salivating like Pavlov’s dog in salty humidities:
Sat alone on the swings, thought of the
Dwarf girl who lived there in a dugout around
The root of the squat palms, from which she had
Escaped the circus yet came out in cooling rain showers
And danced naked in stunted opulence in the long
Mowed ruts of the soccer field which sloped down
As if a lip to the muddled bank where alligators
Lay like pets, torpid and untrainable:
I would row out to her in my underwear slogging gin,
On the inflatable raft smelling of chlorine stolen from
The dentist’s pool, after all the fireworks were spent
In the air and coming down in little wishes of forest fire:
Would draw up to her on the bank, her bee stung wishes
The areolas of little seashells, tell me how she thought
Of migrating on Monday to the sea, but needed a bicycle
Her size: I thought maybe she loved me, even though
I was quite busted and unbeautified- Couldn’t imagine
Then how she might disappear, picked up on Halloween,
Mistaken for a Guatemalan and drafted into the step ladders
Of the orange grove, so I was left to salinate alone, tilting
In the grass like a ship going down, but not mortified:
So lazy there that the mosquitos didn’t want to draw blood,
And when the principle drove around, fearing his wife,
He didn’t even solicit me, as I swigged my brine, thought
How early the sky would blush, my farts would rhyme,
And the dalliances of youth went down like sneakered tramps,
The landscaping swell calligraphies: Each house held
A neat family, and a dime buried in a curse, and we all drifted
Away from one another like hoarse survivors allotted to
The waves.