The Prettiest Girls Poem by Robert Rorabeck

When I'll go to a little store in China—
Shanghai, actually—while my little Chinese wife is working
In the sky scrapers that look like two Siamese dots
In a circus,
I will learn how to ask in mandarin for one or two boxes
Of wine,
And then I will go back into that entry place—not a foyer
At all—
Not an amphitheater, in fact—and spend all of my summer
Away so many floors beneath her,
Drinking that swill while the three little pigs dance,
Trying to make light of it all
And writing something: something that doesn't
Even have a chance—
Until we are free to go to the parts of the world together
We have never seen—
Like marionettes stemmed off from their orchestrates
Wills, going to see caesuras, and bonfires,
And glaciers—
And sharing dreams of French kisses—as the world that they
Happen upon boughs into its nebulas like
An infant in the daydreams of Christmas—yes, kissing us on
Both cheeks, this is the way the creeks are flowing,
Downhill—
Like tears from the Catholic church across from the university
Far into the midnights past crepuscule,
Long after all of the prettiest girls have checked their mailboxes
And gone inside.