The Magician's Palm Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Caffeine has me up, while they make love
In another sea, spilling vocabulary words
I haven’t memorized: the piano plays behind
The unmowed grass, like minutes of sunlight
Trying to wade through
The crocodile’s eyes: how lovely is his hunger,
As he eats the neighbors’ dog,
Speaking Egyptian in a movie I am too tired
To understand, but this is an immaculate will,
The children lined up and salivating anticipating
The red play of the ball. I wish I wouldn’t
Stutter when I woke up to tell her good morning,
And made her runny eggs, a fine meal on
Porcelain in the current of light, the white angels
Hiding naked behind the curtains, so clean,
Like tennis players, and her left breast haloed
In her insouciant slip, like a pigeon in the magician’s
Palm, cooing areola of yawning flesh,
She said to me, I suppose, she said to me with her
Eyes, she was bored, and wished she had something
Meaningful to read, or his strong jaw to rest upon,
Like an insect ready to molt and change on a tow of grass,
But then she wasn’t looking at me anymore, her
Freckles redolent though disinterested; I fell into them
Like a child leaning over a deep well, curious as to see
Himself in her eyes.