The Fiery Absences Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Going back to school, remembering the vagrant crushes
That linger there through the warn out palmettos:
Trying to get across the canals to the other neighborhoods,
And lingering in the places that certainly do not
Belong- Lingering there- thinking upon the pond
Of bedfellows- of little girls whose bones are
As hollow as bird bones:
Returning to them in the after hours of their senses
As they light above you shedding skins like
Katydids, like jewels in their kimonos- soon they
Will be turning out the lights and coming down
To you- soon they will say all the pretty verbs that
Create your world, and bring into it
All of the fiery absences that exist without them.