Robert Rorabeck Poems

Now we sang of the infinite yards: and now this:
And now this:
The way I sometimes still see my own mother inside the blue carport
Getting undressed and electrocuted:
...

Now is all in the skinny green of arrows shot
Above the prairies of harmless orchards:
Now is all of this, like the far away singing of my mother
Pressed like a hopeless romantic to my father’s
...

Now I am all down by a skull
And my wishes are as little as little girls:
As they go by the homeopathy of their dollhouses of
Grottos,
...

If my body is here now; it will soon be a
Cenotaph, it will soon be a firework spent:
And even while I still have my bicycle, even it will not be
Able to move after I am gone-
...

Finally you have come to me:
A girl who appreciates my soul: who undresses and makes
Love to me,
Even if she still has two children, and the easier
...

Now it feels all like this: all so around the orangish corners
Of another uncalled for canyon;
And this is the way that the newly weds and the preschoolers
Color in:
...

All the good deeds you won’t have to worry about,
Because I am going down into another sleep:
In the valleys of forget-me-nots where the grandest dragons
Tell lies
...

Received in a choir that has no throat,
Received in an ocean without a boat, the lines of clean
Absence in the roofless house
Looks straight up at angels, the airplanes flicker like
...

Saved from drowning by
My grandmother’s seashell doll,
All that is happening in the
Orange orchards,
...

Promenades of good intent, and I have a house
But no occupation except for
The daycare of my grayed adolescence, as Alma is not
Alone in the house her father promised her,
...