Dancing In A Zoetrope Poem by Robert Rorabeck

And then they will say that you have
Abandoned Colorado with the arcs and the blueberries
Uneaten by cats as with canaries,
The lightning leaping from nipple to mountainous nipple,
Trying to draw attention from the airplanes
Or something else even more beautiful
As I steal fireworks and a three legged dog walks underneath
The trees and then the overpasses:
And a breeze blows up from a very young age,
Settles in the trailer parks beside the orange groves,
And wonders if you have heard him whispering your
Name,
As pearls grow in their grottos like the ghosts of seahorses
In their saturnine estuaries, as preschoolers do
Drawn and lonely from the school bus to the teeter-totters
As the wolves watch the housecats on the edge of the parks
On the edge of a country where I have seen you
Riding in my car, taking off your blouse as if a picture
Dancing in a zoetrope in pure sunlight just
Trying to tease me.