How Did They Survive Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Fetishes for airplanes and bicycles and swing sets:
Young lovers underneath an apple tree underneath all of these
Things,
Tornados making love across the canal, drinking sandcastles
And talking cats—
Afterwards, prisms in the sky—the disguises of a drinking god—
He lowers his hand to you in the parking lot as
The waves come in to see the Pieta in the grotto:
They are paying for soggy Eucharist and lighting electronic
Candles:
Afterwards, Siamese and amnesiac mermaids will drive
Home to cul-de-sacs, routed in beautiful cars—
Into atmospheres of kitchens and pools that chime full of
Midnight up slope from the alligators-
Like stewardesses touching down into place in which
It is a wonder how they survive.