Dis-A-Peatr Poem by Robert Rorabeck

You know that the séances were broken by trees,
And now that your children are
Asleep and thumb-sucked,
Christmas is finally laying in: even the stewardesses
Are coming home out of the sky,
Eager to pluck their thumbs into something-
And their daddy’s abide with green eyes
And jumping jacks,
Petting the thorny heads of the precious amphibians
That wait there beside them
Perpetually,
Forever- Just as tourists by ice-cream,
And the scars run down my neck like necklaces of
Waterfalls,
Or pictures I have seen of Kit Carson peak falling
To the left shoulder of my once muse:
As these pleas I write for another woman flash
Like phosphorous in the mouth of
A trapeze of that other time
When you were, for a moment here,
And then literally,
Utterly- and forever-
Dis-
A-
Pear.