Barking Dogs And Crying Children Poem by Robert Rorabeck

This is the manuscript lost in the woods:
Peter Pan before the head hits the pillow—
Woebegone thought tossed to a wave,
And then the night proceeds
To lose little boys into it—
Visions in procession—
Cuckolded husbands and spotted dear,
Forts defended by fireworks
And deranged soldiers—
Zoetrope of ancestors turning into a zoo
While the night is out,
And the ocean calls down the moon—
Places that are lost,
Kidnapped children—
Teachers believing in what they’ve taught
To no one, while the rain extends—
Hobos vanish with unicorns,
Housewives make peace with their loneliness,
And the poet panhandles for a crackerjack
Prize—what these lines are good for,
What they can be used as—
While she makes love to him,
Technicolor prisms lost to the blindness of
The night—
Words of love over-spoken by barking dogs
And crying children.