Underneath Our Semiprecious Sky Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Lost to the cycling’s of my gray youth,
With dreams of stealing bicycles and moving out
Into the great processions of the masses,
Of joining men with the same color and clothing as I,
And riding out dutifully into an extravaganza too big for the
Screen:
And the sky panting out over us, waiting for fireworks and
Then the moon;
And the little whispers we would give to our lovers all up
And down the rocks at the seashore, lost in their green eyes
All alike as the waves:
Multitudinous and happening, and escaping again into houses
On a block as big as a country, with children underneath
Parasols watching boisterous sprinklers
Holding hands with them like little offerings while standing out
And smiling across the street and up and down at my
Winsome brothers:
All of us motioning to different herons that would dive
Like bottle rockets fast and swift and gurgling into the canals:
And the mailmen would come while the stewardesses we
Supposed shot overhead;
And we would go inside and listen to the silently industrious whim
Of the air-conditioning; and the ceiling fans making it as well,
Like creatures of similar designs, so that eventually
Satisfied stillness and crickets waxing their legs: the little curls
Of homeopathic processions through the grasses,
And the hot stifling of making love from house to house for
Blocks around in fields and fields underneath our semiprecious sky.