Taking Away Grandfathers Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Fat as rainbows belching into the city
And in the suburban yards one or two city cypress
As new as truant children skipping from school;
And if you look into the mouths where lions yawn,
Whole kaleidoscopes filled with city school
Buses,
And the long, young yards cut up by palmettos:
When it rains tender hooks- the alligators snore,
And you spend a long, young time
Passing smoke between the mouths- and Roman
Candles send up hopeless flares to the
Finnish bellies of the airplanes who go and then leave
Like holidays,
Spreading their arms like superheroes- and then
Taking away grandfathers or whoever once existed
Before your eyes.