Beside Forever Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Now the quiet intrudes on the silence:
Bodies lay as restive as hummingbirds who have stopped
Breathing:
All of your offspring are lying beside you just as most
Of them will lie beside you in the ground somewhere
Where the sky is weepy;
And your mother is downtown kissing a fiancé;
And the place you used to live is up in weeds and rattlesnakes;
This is just my poem to you, something I promised myself
Against:
This bad habit, because I am ugly, and I am afraid that you
Once kissed me and afterwards went away forever:
And I don’t want you to read my poetry to you, because how
Can I take that back from you
When it will be and is even now someone else you will lie
Beside forever.