Winter Surely Comes Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Troubling to look in the mirror since
Middle-school, when everything else was just shear
Nirvana,
And I hadn’t yet drunken hard liquor, or known the
Delights of venal distemper;
And you were just the zygote of unbeaten memory,
Or I had really just laid off you in the cool green
Rug in front of Saturday morning cartoons
Up the stairs where I had hidden the last of the crumbs
Of the birthday cake I wasn’t suppose to eat for the
Next day or two,
With piss stains and come; and I’d stolen from
The rich white paper folded into airplanes, to count
Coo on the satanic femme fatals lounging on day trips
Between the rafters;
And fans, and fans, and above that a zoo of airplanes;
And there was just one beautiful orange tree, budding, spun:
And you were just a little girl I had thought of,
Now cornered, a housewife on the run,
A daughter too- A tiny house in a forest that is shooting off,
Amidst the trees I had never seen, whose cones are pure
Gold and silver,
Ornamental they fall down and hypnotize the very wolves
They reintroduced to seduce you; how you do that,
I don’t want to know, and yet winter surely comes.