Toward The Jungle Of The Deeper Shore Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Traffic is an endless dream:
That is what our Presidents are made of,
While the Mexicans crack ice,
And the great population of iguanas lick
Corduroy flies in their despotic jungle;
And today I ate my plantains,
And the sun and sky rolled nice for me-
Well, I wasn’t the prettiest boy around, but
I didn’t need to be:
I was sharp and could dive down for miles,
And paid no attention to the housewife smiles:
They could not enter me for very long without
Needing to come back up into the shallows;
And the Italian boys came in nicely bronzed,
With teeth like corns of ivory;
And their wives and lovers and day glow honeys
Sat up for awhile on the hay bales and took their pictures;
Studded and ringed- it is a funny two legged circus
They go around in- living their lives promenaded monkeys
On moony chains;
And the sad thing was I saw you there with them with your
Auburn hair and your old soccer tan lines like beautiful scars,
And you were going around with them like a sweet titted
Goldy bear,
Bobbing alluringly in their sunny shadows, taking your pictures
To remember and compare
How illusory your world of his is, and how spare:
While I stared at you from underneath a gray hood and cheeky
Scars,
Watching you mop your cherries across the tables and the bars,
And it was all I needed to perceive
How lovely was your shallows, and how save I was
For from any side of your luscious contours it was only a step
Or two toward the jungles of the deeper shore.