Inside Here Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Quiet is the solitude of all of my certainty,
Lying here, resting in the places that will remain as quiet
As the shells of animals given to the loins of their feasts:
I am here and airplanes are in the sky,
Hanging there like jewelry and each cloud a Christmas tree
Going its way,
And singing the songs that it keeps to itself:
The sky is a forest fire burning a wreck of all of my dreams,
Girls with coyotes flung out in the desert with the sharp
Ends of chicken bones,
Unlucky drums that have the sound of the skin of pythons;
And when I drove by Alma’s house tonight she was not home,
And now I am drinking the cheapest wine in my quietest of abodes,
Hoping to find Alma,
The mariposa stuck like hot taffy to the greenness of the aloe beside
The carport and the sick old neighbors are drinking beer
And never dreaming of her;
And I am lucky and across the canal, petted like a pure stone by
The soft dirt;
And Alma is gone, and my house moves inside here.