Wishing That It Had Never Happened Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The fine young make-believes have already started
Shooting in:
From the gated communities of Parkland they’ve
Drifted,
And young Italian girls take photographs of each other,
And I take photographs of them:
They are venal and cottage cheese-
They will go to college, or they’ll do as they please:
Like you, they might make love to me,
If they have to, but they will never fantasies over
These estuaries as I have had to:
How I’ve tried to compare you to the muses of
Baudelaire, the two strangers made sisters by his
Pervasive charges,
The sick muse and the venal muse: I didn’t remember
That before you used to play soccer together,
But who as really in charge;
And if you’d won the season for our white tributary,
What then would have stopped your taught calved
Sorority from kissing under the bleachers,
And then to pass out like carnal wildflowers;
If it’s not what happened, it is at least what used to happen
When my mind awakened from happenstance
And began to matriculate toward the better causes of
Missing graduation- wishing that it had never happened.