Down His Path Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Loneliness over the yellowing adobe of
A teacher’s hovel- the street winds from here:
It goes to your house,
Where you lay browned bodied with your children
Laughing in your yard-
Your father underneath the engine of a truck:
You still live with him even though you told me
He put a gun to your mother’s head when he came
Back to Mexico.
Now the stars bathe you, and you think of
Your own man, and the roses he didn’t give you-
You have taken his hand, and begun to
Look across the orchards to where the sandstone
Lay suppliant to the sea: soon she will be combing
Over him, taking as she wishes-
Then over this, as your eyes close like butterfly wings
Over this, you may think of me as you continue
Down his path.