Of Its Knavish Heavens Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Trying to save up all of my pennies
For another wishing well which is only useful
In captivating your daughter,
Alma- with its casual aurora,
Even though all of these petty wishes will be
Lost into that shallow estuary
Nearby which we grew up so far apart:
And your daughter will arrive bearing gifts
I will never know:
She will love me herself, neither you nor
I will ever know: but will we know each other,
Mutually through the fields of falling sun and
Falling snow-
I’ve called you my muse, and many ways you’ve
Awakened towards me,
Playing those games of wet summit spilling to
Cover the mouth of an erupting volcano,
While so much time is lost,
And the honeymoons are spent- and the eels
And the otters swim in the flood planes
Like ribbons and puppies- and I thought that you were
Beauty while I survived,
And the traffic moaned, and the heavens perceived
Up there above the amusement parks
And the trailer parks until twilight fell into its
Dimness- and all that could be, turned to its metamorphosis,
While the jasmine spilled its perfume into another
Night, and you went to a home across the train tracks
And to a mother and father who kept
You near the bed the way a rattlesnake covets a
Turtledove- or the way the moon looks upon
This earth, trying to captivate a teary ocean into the bosoms
Of its knavish heavens