Over And Gone Poem by Robert Rorabeck

There is no good hope for me,
No second houses beyond the gravelling pews,
Nothing beyond the first and last move-
Fatally entranced,
Picking my nose:
I am no good at football,
And I cannot remember my lines-
For a sport I can mow the yard and kill garden
Snakes because they serve a master who won
The spelling bee:
Tied up in ugly scars, confused with innocence:
Paper snowflakes fall from the jubilant airplanes,
And I am in debt to the spin doctors of
An immortal high school;
I can fish and smoke a corncob pipe,
But I have no freckles-
I walk straight past the rattlesnake who ate my
Little dog from Kansas,
While the alligator stares on perversely from
The canal’s imperfect glass:
I can keep on walking because there is no end
To this neighborhood,
Past the checkout line of topless sunbathers,
All married but not one of them calls me over,
To help them carry riches out into their cars;

And I leap so many ditches until even
The housewives appear strange
And unreal,
Circling and chored-
Their children blond and social- Somewhere beyond
All this uneventful maelstrom there is that
Golden fleece hung upon a smoking tree,
But with no friends to help me defend each department
Of the courted monsters,
Her hand has slipped away and ringed,
And I can hear them making love form inside the church,
Carrying along with their well-attended play.
Delayed outside indefinitely under threat of rain,
Trying to tie up this shoe even after it is
All over and gone.