Without Even Trying Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Open up sparrow- can-open your voice
To the leather tramping sun,
You haven’t a choice:
Your canaries are all wrecked in their minds,
Slumbering poetesses for men
With burning-coal eyes;
Your voice recedes- your voice comes again,
Like so many things that haven’t a mind,
Like traffic, like swings,
And waves.
The tiniest of the littlest girls on their knees
For trinkets-
The trucks honking. The airplanes are speaking too,
And writing your name in the sky.
They are really trying, even though they can’t
Spell.
They haven’t passed kindergarten, but it is just
As well,
Because if they were more gallant you would love
Them without even trying.