Smelling Salts Of Another Sea Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Chimney sweeps in youthful fugue-
The dusking sky of hot air balloons, your pale
Brown
Complacent eyes-
Your pale brown complacent eyes,
With his risky macho hand on your pale
Brown complacent thigh-
Cumulous accumulating straight up through the
Unbanishable skies:
Watching football, alligators like pets at sandaled
Feet;
If this is what you are doing now, you can never love:
How can you love
With your eyes behind sunglasses:
How can you ever love when you’ve always been
Too beautiful; and this must be the fiend himself-
And aren’t you so assured behind the wheel;
And the watering hole is poisonous
And full of dead princes you’ve transformed one time
Or another,
Kissing them as your color changes- as your color
Changes after work- I can’t tell you your dreams-
You’ve told me, and I know-
I hung my guardian angel in the rainstorm,
So I know- to keep coming down your way without
A sword or a good luck candle-
I no longer pray. I am passed out in the foyer when
Over my shoulder they are serving hors de ordervs
in bright soirée; and the three young boys
Are in smiling fugue in the hot air balloon passed around
By the ceiling fans-
And your brown eyes are smiling or not smiling relaxing
Either way complacent
In front of the television watching your favorite football
Teams
With his hand on your brown knee;
And either way your eyes were not for me;
Past out underneath the crystal boats
Right away, my nostrils suddenly
A flare, smelling salts of another sea.