The Tortoises' Cabals Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I like your eyelashes drunkenly in the carports
Where my mother almost drowned:
The rain listening to my efforts—drowning in
The rebar:
The amphibians all princes pretending to swim
Until they have to go to bed and
Take shelter in the aloe:
And other words sleeping like rattlesnakes in the
Backyard underneath the browning
Christmas trees—
Subtle architectures of rattlesnakes
Diademing the poor man's forts—where my mother
Comes home and the rabbits die—
And the tortoises hold cabals, trying to figure
Out what it is they love, exactly,
About the butterfly.