To Survive Poem by Robert Rorabeck

There are pizza parlors lost in
The White Mountains—
Maybe even the pizza parlors are still even there,
In the little armpit dug up from the desert
And where it yet snows in
Arizona,
Where we might be seen outside the Chinese
Restaurant that used to be a Taco Bell for less
Than a year—
And in that ancient memory
Where only ghosts survive,
What will we celebrate but the ghosts of
Capitalism and Jesus,
The only things that ever haunted the history
Of our monuments,
While we poked our heads out of our shells once
Or twice,
And thought of all the money that it would take
Forever
To survive.