Flooded Earth Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Here you go thinking that I was dead,
You turned on and on like the little girl dancing
Without gravity, untwining all of her things
Until she is fully grown and Zephyrus even without
Any sky to denote her breathing,
Just the sharp blue quality of her eyes,
A star dying, jubilant and blushing up to the very last
Second:

Lying on my back beside the waves, looking
Up you kept changing your dress,
But it couldn’t stop who you were….

I bought you flowers, I stripped myself naked
Before the mirror of my words and showed you
My scars, my hollow places, the places that were
About to cave in, or already had: I wanted to become
An artist on your planet, and garden unrequited bouquets
Through the bare footsteps of your deity.
When I failed, it was because you had a boyfriend and
So many admirers, I knew
The way they strutted like tobacco princes in the dusty
Redness of your out-of-state photograph collections-

but who was the one who might
Wish to see you through the unavoidable beauty of your perfect suit?
Or cast a net like a spell which would ensure the fidelity of
Your body to my conquest with the stamp of one kiss?

I ask like an echo- How long now since my art truly felt
For the beating of your soul, that resounding basin I used to
Share a class together with, just one- And now out there
You have gone like some bird looking for the tranquility of mountains
Resounding above a flooded earth,
Which is what I have become, hypocritically dry-eyed and
Taciturn- a dry county who has learned how to float so well,
Who doesn’t booze anymore,
Who doesn’t even go outside to enjoy zoos or sunlit parades,
The way a young boy’s balloon might attached to his hollow wrist
Like a jubilant wind-kicked pet;

And you, and you- There you are some ten years away, barely
Even obtainable even by the speed of light: I can barely even see
You from my bedroom underground where I used to pray for
Your nourishment before each of my meals of sweet holocaust:
And you didn’t come, and still you turn, blazing,
Some sort of sexy idea yet caught upon the way a doe flits
Leggy through a forest of snares,
The dangerous consequences yet avoided, some sort of unkept
Promise, you just keep leaving, turning brighter and brighter,
Turning, turning.