Cadmus's Hounds Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The unicorns are striking above the airplanes-
It is because the airplanes are lying down, creches into
Green valleys-
Into which cerulean cataracts fall:
This is the beautiful place of your childhoods, where
The heroes fell your public schools have made you forgetful of:
Looking up, the motes in pinwheel blindness,
The hummingbirds touching down upon the shoulders
Of a boudoir of roses:

The dogs have run their course- they are celebrating,
Cadmus's hounds, on a dinner of fried chicken,
And you have your hand on her knee in
The drive in theatre-
Watching that one note play; it is as good as making love
In a cemetery-
There you see the ghosts of fireworks in her eyes:

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I will go to work,
But it is as if I am retired- the apples ferment in a tangled
Orchard hidden in the Everglades:
You will see your favorite teacher tomorrow and he will
Tell you that you have gained too much weight,

But you have beautiful children in either hand to show him,
And sometimes, after sleeping, the airplanes will leap so high into
The sky after dinner that they will metamorphosis-
And they will become the swans and herons who come here
Every year in the wintertime on their wayward trips into Mexico:

As the country yawns and rises up into the basins of
The tallest of mountains, you are not fit enough to hike into
Tomorrow-
There will be a peace for a moment- and a flower, like a weed,
Will bloom amidst the cracks and the recesses
Of a high school that, after the holidays, you can no longer
Imagine yourself as ever having a belonging.