For Their Own Gods Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I have written you alone,
In Colorado- drowned out by all the tourism
Who never sees the higher summits burned
Where I have kissed you,
And tattooed you to airplanes- and lost my soul,
Slipping down,
Metamorphosed, scarred, hung up in the alders,
Watching the cold fires burning in the
Armpits of careless stones placed there by
Devils:
And all of this wrecked and alone: the traffic
Fibrillating, a valentines of families
Washing cyclical- a chant to the reliable gods
In their faithful architectures cartographed-
While anemones articulate, washed there
In the high mass of stone- and boys of
Loneliness file out of church-
The sky thunderously apoplectic, like an orchard
Cremated before a diabolical lighthouse
In a marriage thrown to the wolves love stricken
Who are bloodily drowning for their own gods