The Sound And Fury Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I walk to the back of the house and take off my boots.
This is in the middle of summer, monsoons,
But there are no mud daubers- that is good
Because I’ve become friendly with a widow spider
In the pump house (mud daubers are her natural predator):
I look at her in the morning, laying on the web.
in the rafters, along the porch, as if a saloon,
My mother has shown me a nest this morning-
I was up so early, I mistook the chicks for kittens,
Mewing slick and velveteen, eyes so blind,
Until she explained. When I step inside, they look at me as if
I’ve not been working, which I haven’t, which is my luxury.
I worry that the publisher hasn’t received my book,
But it is such a little thing, a small worry of an insouciant heart,
Like an overused word kept handy in the margin,
Until in overuse it becomes rotund, a morbidly obese cadaver
In faithful romance:
A fly crawls on the skin over my elbow, and I’ve begun to
Read Faulkner, and all the children in high school pray in
Silence, hands whitened by bleach, eyes accusatory- They do not contemplate,
Like I once have, the kiss for a greater love,
The sea in faithful gyration, the curling empirical goddess:
I suppose, I do not love anyone right now, because I haven’t
Grown up, though it is getting late, and all the gentlemen with
Their ladies are returning from the ball, and the sky is in a particular
Sort of glow, and not a single vehicle is moving: Right now,
This is how it must be. The houses are only half built,
The young mother is balancing on her bicycle with the enfant
Seated behind her, drooling. Here, the canals divide like
Suburban calligraphy, the lesser successes abound,
Tiny palms grasping irresistibly, and even I
Can remember what that gallery displayed as we came home so long ago
To pray and eat our dinner.