Wellington Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I fall asleep in the middle of the day,
Because of the wounds you gave me, the wounds
Which have come naturally, unattended;
I give myself newer chances at metamorphosis,
As if I could awake myself opportunely,
Become your noontime bachelor, put on toothy grins;
I lay down across an entire suburbia, melancholic
And yawning who doesn’t remember me,
Who in kind go out into their romantic yards and fall asleep
In the landscaping of quarter-acre lots, like
Toy countries of kind old men:
I see you swimming around the single cypress in the
Daubing humidity- Wasps clean your mouth humming,
And birth their young underneath your bawdy eyes,
I try to write down what I see, to say mutely
To nobody, or a stewardess busy on an airplane
Pretending to show an interest, I try to become beautiful
For her, and the entire mess that spilled out after graduating,
Where they fly now from home to home, kissing lips
I’ve never heard speak, while my mind wanders the red
Clay of the baseball diamond behind the high school in
A merd-brown fog, and girls no longer young think
They hear the quobbling of basketballs in the picturesque
Moats of light, romantically, from the fairy-tale
Courtyards where used to be their game.