Robert Rorabeck Poems

They have this, and this is real:
As real as the concrete rivers that the cars drive- while,
Words are not real,
Even placed at their fingertips they are ghosts:
...

Cars drive by- laughing, the light fades as the bow shoots
Its quiver full of hopes up into the sky-
Through the panes of windows, the last of another day’s
Bright visage can yet be seen mottling, friendly:
...

Powers fill my gold toys, simulacrum that they have
Chosen to hide in the keystones of mountains:
Breath in my lungs as I remove her to the bedroom, into all
Of the warm loneliness the experts were sure would
...

Up in the air where no one lives,
And then looking down
And feeling humbled- Remembering a house
That doesn’t stand anymore,
...

Powers fill my gold toys, simulacrum that they have
Chosen to hide in the keystones of mountains:
Breath in my lungs as I remove her to the bedroom, into all
Of the warm loneliness the experts were sure would
...

No fields can disguise the flaxen natures of
My own fears:
What gods I have spent- what sorrowful tantalizing
Memories have grafted themselves,
...

Sunken, the plentiful land records itself:
New numbers and new scars in the flesh, tattoos of windmills
Recorded across the field,
And children lost on their way home: the fire too shy to ignite
...

And it goes away, as paper snowflakes melt for my
Grandmother,
As the warmest of fires melt in my stomach-
By morning I will have more scars,
...

Where lies the lost language of God, his affixed words
Which were the things themselves, grown sour and
Sweet things on vines off his tongue to trample down and
Relax upon the infant earth and there to spread as God
...