It happens that I am not at home, <br />And that I am filled without reason for a place that <br />Will not heal, <br />While the stewardesses come in talking nonsense, <br />Fresh from their leaping bivouacs, <br />But famished from their overpriced breastfeeding <br />Of their constituency of tourists; <br />And they lie across the room and wait for the special <br />Cases of lions, <br />And the fire drills during homeroom: <br />And they mouth off to me with their eyes, swimming: <br />Turquoise and dove-shelled: <br />Almost salient, and reachable across the dime-store <br />Canal, <br />So my breathing becomes busied, <br />And I am held over, and lightened by their speak-easies, <br />Hermosas of the airlines, <br />Or other waxy fairytales, until my parents arrive and <br />Drive me home to bedtime and to other places <br />That I awake and praying, like a tortoise who becomes <br />A lighthouse in his shell.<br /><br />Robert Rorabeck<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/in-his-shell/
