To This Poem by Robert Rorabeck

As tender as a kiss given over easy with the eggs
At breakfast:
Your brown body taught with promises:
And I holding you there in that booth, swearing into your
Eyes, just as any boy:
Your wordless lips lingering upon my clothes
As I got to work
Selling Christmas trees; and at night I have to make love
To girls neither of us knows
And the snow snows, but it isn’t real- but paper cut up
By custard cowboys
Lingering in the plastic graves of kindergarten sung to
By kittens with wings and castanets of their
Own,
Petted by Stewardesses who are always too busy to address
Us directly- their eyes lingering in the booths of
Clouds- their pilots happening upon the sun:
And I think of you, sitting down to a
Feast that melts through the coops of my daydreams- Alma,
And finally comes to this.