Into Something That Cannot Be Stolen Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Adding the angel bright kerosene to my heart
And stumbling through the smoky forest where the bees
Are laying with the leaves:
The boys are dark in Mexico, dark as the shadows between the
Pits of trees;
And I saw you and your man today, Alma, waiting in the line
At the place I was shopping,
But I got there before you came, like a shadow that was tired
Of following:
I went by you as quiet as a frightened dog, and he was in the corner
Watching you,
As saturnine as a bear culled by an owl; but I could feel you:
Feel that you were mine:
I went by saying nothing, and wondered where your children were.
Then I drove home, towards the ocean and the bushels full of
Stars,
Went home as lonely as a beaten hound, which I am afraid is what I
Am, but then I put your eyelash into a painting by Picasso
And made it disappear entirely into that woman’s eyelash that
He painted;
It was my witchcraft without practice but picked up from the driest
Country in the land where you come from:
And I want to take you and your children to the movies,
And on bicycles to run parallel with the spangling cutlery of the waves:
I want to share a life with you that we do not yet have,
And I want us to look each other in the eye and remember how I
Have hidden your soul away into something that cannot be stolen.