What Her First Daughter's First Word Must Be Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Listening to the bodies partying in the rain
Like the red shoots in the armpits of cypress, there is a
Good chance that I will begin making love again
Just as steadily as two wayward cats in a rainstorm;
And I love thinking like this, my head as numbed as a goldfish
Crossing county lines in a plastic bag,
Homeless from a state fair that has packed its bags and it
Too is moving away;
And here out on the shell rock avenues, I imagine I can perk
My ears and hear her breathing:
She seems like she is coming from a broadcast in Colorado,
And I crane my neck and flutter my lucky gills just to
Catch a glimpse of her,
But I am no more lucky than a penny of a wish tossed into
A drinking fountain on a lunch break, while she is swimming further
And further up her sweet accoutrements,
Forgetting all of the superfluous wishes of her youth, and now
Only dreaming about what her first daughter’s first word must be.