Up In The Morning Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Coming up in the morning,
Like a fish drowning- somebody’s
Swift sided pet,
Who has never seen trees or television
Channels which aren’t waving,
Like the séances
Of working girls, come in doors
Carrying their baskets for grandmother,
Not having anything else to sell-
They have to do this, work naked in the
Glowing kitchen,
Until they become that color, all tawny
And delivered,
Like ornaments in a tree house in a storm
In Delray;
Hot pies for thumbs, dimpled pillows,
Basins where a slender drip of water echoes
The loving jewelry taken off necks-
For both eyes, these are good, and it is morning
Once more, and I am swimming up
To meet them, a rose in my teeth like a pollinated
Bone, unrequited,
Because there’s really no other work,
And the country joins me from the lip of the bowl,
And the kelp sways and gurgles-
In this manner, we enjoy her highways as she carelessly
Ballerinas the house until it is as clean as a new thing.