Happy Birthday Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Then there was Colorado
The tourists traveled to, never once thinking of
Aspen,
And the steep paths up which my mother was born
Into the cabin of a blind man
With her brother:
How they became lost together, suffering
Various metamorphosis, until
My mother smelled of lavender, and flew away:
And her brother dropped off the cliff
And into a trailer park,
Drinking himself into a working class epiphany:
And I thought of them together while I
Was alone,
And my mother was an attention in the sky,
Shining in the sun, wishing me a happy birthday.