Under Your Wings Poem by Robert Rorabeck

If they are words they are tumbling through the mystery
Of air-condition and ceiling fans
While we are ruining the world and I didn’t get to see you again
Today because someone was sick:
Your daughter whose second birthday is coming soon,
And look at all of these cars and buses now like wishes,
Alma:
And the houses that travel the lanes like icing, and you are there,
And the flowering of your house seems to bemuse you:
You clean your house and you cook dinner:
How many times do you comb your hair, to keep so beautiful,
Alma,
When the last time you saw mountains you were passing from
Your home, and away into America,
Like a butterfly with a backwards stare: and now what is in your
Dark eyes, your brown skin such a beautiful metamorphosis
Standing out amidst the pedestrians;
And can you imagine what our boy would look like, Alma,
Standing right there, under the roofs,
Under your wings.