Whatever Gold Summers Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Killing whatever gold summers come in their outgoing vestments-
You step out in a purple curtain,
And smile through your brownness: and I like it, when you remember
Where the cars drive alongside the overgrown fences,
And the crooked mailboxes that sway like nodding gravestones:
They just go this way, and I have to imagine the ways that you take
Home to your kids,
Because you get angry when I follow you too far, the insouciant airplanes
Taking off like bottle rockets,
And other assured but meaningless things, who only move because
They have to.