Boothill Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Now the words are thrown out
Ashes of the dead beloved to scatter
From where the breathing look
Across the desert atmosphere.
Here, where petals soon come to wilt
After the crowds of distant families
Disperse, the words lay thirstily
Upon their backs with open throats,
Waiting for the generosity of the
Universal bartender, but it does
Not rain for them. They are laid
In the row of tombstones jutting
From the jaws of Boothill,
And their ghosts do not speak to them,
The way their mothers once did when
They were still young and learning their voice.
They are the empty center of this town
Which moves the way ants do— never away
From their work, the forgotten dreams
And ancestors their unattended to garden,
Beautiful bones that once displayed lips
left to scatter by the
Elements, the cold things, the only
Things that bother to brush them,
Scraping away the entirety of their meaning,
Until they are caught up in the earth
And twisted under the boots of the workers,
The only things to remain, marching, accounting to
The government, and the words, the unblemished
Memories that once touched the fingertips of lovers
Lay barren and muted, scattered upon their dry hill.