Into The Nights Of Those Christmases Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Baseball lays wetly upon my skin-
Fallen like tatters from a web in the forest:
Here it lays,
This past-time outside of the parking lot
Or the tent where we used to sell Christmas trees
And I listened to your brown
Words telling me wonderful lies in the weedy
Pasture beside the canal,
The traffic streaming, keeping up with the reports,
But heading home:
The Christmas trees from slave states cut down,
Entombed underneath the palms,
As I kissed your pretty lips through the air,
Alma- as if you were a fire to keep me warm,
And I set my own soul outwards like a wet cloth
Of wounded children into the overpasses
And against the waves I never saw-
To find you,
To make you give promises to keep a residence inside
Of my ribs- while the carriages plundered
And the alligators gave their promises to
Bicycles- into the nights of those Christmases
Trying to remember the games I wished that we’d
Played.