Eras Of Soldiers Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Eras of soldiers lining the highways like billboards—
Beautiful delusions in their gears of playgrounds.
And I amidst the tourists of cars—
Waiting for my wife to give birth to our
Half-blood baby,
Waiting for a sign to beckon from the barbed wire
Of constellations—
Something to correct the sense of beauty—
A child who knows how to piece together the
Pieces of a china heart:
There is a long roadway from his atrium—
See him fitted in strides inside his mother’s
Womb:
See now he has no problem:
He is in a little village. He is in a neon tomb—
He who knows no words I speak of,
Knows better ways of expressing the warm
Night of his heaven’s cocoon- -
Enjoying the festoons of his egg-yoke Christmas—
Soon he will be outside—
And he will know lions. I will want to drink for
Him—I will want to bring his china-doll fingers
Up to caress these scarred billboards
And ask him who he will be fighting for
Now that he has stepped into a bigger tomb.