Your Almost Beauty Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I stand in you the shallowness of echoes
Waiting for the bus
As the lions yawn- and your children whose
Pink ribs are as if candy
As if roses scattered across the shell rock:
I am sure they would rather me at home-
I am sure that they would rather be almost anywhere
Else, as the sun rises
And the earth in her neighborhoods effervesces,
As she has been at this a long time
While there has been so many restaurants and daycares
Planted about her,
And so many things she doesn’t care about
But are lucrative, just as I saw you the other day,
Golden, hatching, but you went off following
Him- and my neighborhoods smelled of your perfume:
And my wrists smelled of the tears and carnivals
Of your body,
Even though it was not echoing- so it too became
A franchise of saltwater and horseshoes-
And then like a lament over a battlefield decorated
By arrowheads, you gave yourself to another man-
And I left the asymmetrical fields of your almost
Beauty, my defeated warriors never to be entertained by you
Again.