Pain Lingers Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Pain lingers
After the cacophony of relatives
Disperses to seed the country,
As a continent depicted by cartographers
A deep runny purple,
For no discernable reason,
Like festive stalactites
Hanging from the dress she chose
To wear once and never took off,
Because a stranger with loud eyes brushed
Against it and remains in the glades of her mind,
Burning atop the strange distance of the
Man she sleeps with as the days
Recede, not unlike waves from
A swollen sea that has overtaken her residence,
So now they come upon her,
That salty undulation she can feel
The tide that brushes against her chest
And brings strange things out of her
While she sleeps, like familiar animals
That glow down from the moon and vanish
Through her smooth forehead.
These important things she soon forgets,
For her eyes’ opening causes such a blindness
No one notices, just the imperfect forms
Rushing toward her, sweeping her up,
And making love to her when no one is looking,
But in the quiet spaces, pooled in primary colors
Around the swing sets where she is newly born,
The gently brilliant things wait for her to play,
But arising, she forgets to notice and so
Pain lingers.