Robert Rorabeck Poems

I lie down in my beautiful sea,
A pain in my side, my eyes far away:
Already, the continents are beginning to move,
Like mother and father screaming from the carport;
...

Last night the law stole my dreams
And banished me into an unworrisome crypt,
Where the moon was so bright that it made the
Nocturnal gardens bloom, coral and spikenard,
...

I left her in the store where she belonged,
And as I drove away I knew she was helping another
Man just as intently as she had done for me,
With those disastrous eyes, in the casual way a housewife might
...

They read your poems, because you sit
Out in the food court with them and randy them
With your eyes, like a click of masked avengers
Dreaming of a Pulitzer prize,
...

Can we feel these atrocities from outer space,
But only alone,

The merit of your soul lies stamped under stone,
...

In the still-life she draws to try
And save animals,
Those flowers are not real,
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Apertures, and openings, and arms,

We work in the service of the divine;
...

It’s time for people to start paying me, really,
For to hide in the glorious spread of fondled light
Winnowed from the spiked palms,
Where the diminutive refugee of the circus lives;
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A macho thing, to want to drive-
I drove to Omaha for one day;
They were selling the truth at a yard sale
In a yard of red clay, like a baseball diamond,
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How do you like yourself now that
They’ve named you the new class ornithologist?
You keep your lucky cricket next to you
To get advise so that they don’t turn you back
...