Beneath The Skies Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Before days of empty pallets I toss these words like
Stones,
In empty classrooms where the girls have gone:
The have gone to sun in the green and Alma’s favorite color
With their preferred men,
And my world is left in the chicken yard to feed the ghosts,
Soft and blue, but whose colors our out of date,
Whose chances have faded too: but I remember them, like a
Virgin grotto in her dark and far unremembered eyes:
These are the placed that you lived in when you were young, Alma,
When mother and father sang you asleep in arid adobe
Or wherever it was you made your home near the thirsty creaks,
While I colored on my desks all alone Alma:
And when I drove by your house tonight Alma you were not home,
But you told me during lunch today that I should be quiet,
Because I having nothing to lose, while you have everything:
Yes, you are as rich and as many as the wildflowers in the Spring,
And I want to worship you and suckle you in the private estuaries of
Your shallowest of brown wells:
I want to paint your wish there spoken in the crepuscule of awakening
Pantomimes,
Where the wooden boys can believe and become real;
Alma, Alma- you are all the gold in my eyes, and I come awakened and
Moved, and I dance for you while the police put their colors
Like merry-go-rounds across the streets and beneath the skies.