The Last Day Of Spring Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Have you discovered me out somewhere
In the middle of America?
Without song, but not having far to go.
Soon I might learn to sing of fireworks, and dream of
This if I remember where it is,
Where I too was still going when yet a child,
Soft-boned and innocent, mostly like a fish:
We were heading south, all the way to the tip
Of the world, and I had never tasted alcohol,
Never visited school,
Or your eyes like far distance penumbras
Which came to haunt me,
Pantomimes of sand-dollars waltzing on
My open neck,
Windows redacted into transoms
Well-lit and curious inside your bosomy house,
The crèche or hut of ribs and doubled purple nipples
With sills of lips that parted and breathed across my
Mouth wafted curtains in the middle of the night
Collecting all the nocturnes,
Wavering in a world where you don’t belong.
I don’t even know who you are, but I know
You do not love me, turning in your gentle spheres,
Letting the bad scientists study you
With their rusted spines and eyes that never close,
Unclothing in your universe of cities, attracting the
Cars and artificial lights:
When I think of you I get drunk and swim,
And stay up all night, fuming thoughts of you from
Between my teeth,
And the ants move in little red trains, and herons fly
Over the crematoriums of everglades;
And I should have never learned to speak, or to
Think in logical processions, because the first word I
Found was a thing which happened to be true,
And as soon as I could learn to walk, I made this
Bouquet for you,
But it didn’t seem to matter, because I couldn’t learn
To sing,
And you did not follow my message,
You gave up and, ringed, changed your name
Never suspecting that for me
Today is the last day of Spring.