The Christian Names Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The night is a cattle call: buzzards counting sheep
In the humid estuaries where grandmothers finally found
Their lost loves,
And swam, and swam with him while the train divided beneath
The overpasses everything that was equally lost,
Until the cars passed, and talked on to themselves,
And the wayward butterflies finally found the sea,
Which was what they always supposed that they should
Always be doing;
And they never got on the bus again, but stole stuff that never
Should have belonged to them,
And sang their songs like fire light talking to the enraptured lips
Of genies, while the lousiest of lions pillaged off into sleep,
And the treasures sips sunk and sunk seven times the
Depths that even the most heartily vested angels could dive
Into the sea,
Until you awakened one morning, swinging in my arms,
And found that everything was safe, even though you had forgotten
The Christian names of all of those important things.