The Wet Lips Of Strange Storms Poem by Robert Rorabeck

You asked me why I had so many candles, when I don’t
Even know all of the saints,
But I’ve been decorating for you, like the pretty colors under
The naked belly of el arco iris,
To try and call you home across the yards of a far away
Deminsion,
Even though I cannot speak fluently in your language:
We both have seen Christmas trees and made love in different
Sorts of penumbras,
And we both hide creatures of shells in our room because I bought
Them together at a thrift store,
And then separated them for us: And the same rainstorms share our
Houses.
And your children play through the caresses and scabbed knees of
Your carpet just as I still turn plastic stewardesses out tumbling on
My paper jets:
And I can look over my wall and see a sparse statuary;
And I can breathe in the places that you have walked and told me
That you cannot leave your children fatherless,
But you left all of Mexico on the bus like a welded casket down a
Stone river;
And now how the nameless hills weep for you, the rattlesnakes
Striking out at the looseness of your shadows
That disperse under the wet lips of strange storm clouds that are
Now so far away.