Falling Away From Our Earth Poem by Robert Rorabeck

About those sad things which rise up and fall
Perpetually to and from this earth,
God sends the rains in a sideways motion
The gray spoonfuls he feeds those empirical children,
The proof of his courtship with the world.
He does such gardening by a gentle light—
See now, he takes her by the waist and drags her
About the fading dance floor; Drunkenly,
Around and around as if he is having fun. She
Swoons in full seasons for him, so her clothes fall off
Like waves leaving the shoreline of her knees and thighs
And she births in her great natures of orphaned children
Which roll forth upon the earth in migrating extinctions.
For, he’s already gone away, leaving his cadmium residues
Like lost soldiers calling blasphemies from the caves
Where the Holy Virgin is in Pieta with her stillborn son—
Listen now, through those falling rains,
And you may hear again the sounds of his footsteps falling,
Falling away from our earth.