Robert Rorabeck - The Periodic Table

How, if you came by boat,
Where there nights of peace and tranquility
Between the sloughs;
And your beautiful reflection unperceived,
And the moon over us both,
While I grew up slightly affluent, tanned,
And scarred like the wild horses
They entrained and captured to race and bet
On at the races:
Like the girls with little song with strip
For the men with the switch-blade billfolds,
This being just another quiet sound I make
Tonight instead of watching the news:
I have been around enough to see how your
Beauty lasts forever inside the art of
Damaged men,
And I am not beautiful,
And my toes are black: I am almost crippled,
But I get along through thoughts of you,
Like an overripe still life inching its way through
The sallow tide:
And I want to say your name, and bloom children
From your stems,
Compare your blood to chlorophyll, and hang you
Forever like an immortal Christmas ornament
On the periodic table.

Robert Rorabeck

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