Airplanes Touching Down Poem by Robert Rorabeck

With the sun going down I think of you—
Linger, nearly unperceivable heat
Which once flooded the highways, blinding men:
Poisonous light contaminating grottos,
Like the franchises that have turned
This country into
A land for well-fed zombies:
Parasitic, you infect me, but I have all but
Shaken it off—
I allow you to surface as the day cools,
As the housewives get ready to receive their
Children once again—
Families coming home, airplanes touching down—
I sit and drink and open old wounds,
The painful craft of trying to recombine with
A woman that was no good for roses—
You languish as the day proceeds, rejoining the night
With its habits—
And tomorrow and afterwards—life and tombs,
Made of the same stuff—a togetherness that
Separates for eternity.