Omaha Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Alone in the building of red bricks
I pretend there are ghosts outside my window-
Even when there are children walking,
There are ghosts between them-
And the high trees rattle even up to
The 4th floor where I am turning my tricks
5ive years ago, maybe more-
Reading the scrawls on papyrus is
All I’m good for, and now
Not even that. Just an old hat
Discarded on a forgotten floor
Where man and wife once christened
The threshold and filled the walls
Full with the new eyes opening
And hungry mouths needing,
A turn of the century boom town
The houses are all pell-mell up the hill
Where the workers lived near the factory
And to the side a little red bricked university
Where the ghosts and the students are
Always walking, humming the tune
Of the way things once were
The knowledge scrawled like graphs
On the makeshift tomb,
As quickly as these times proceed.
They have build a grand highway over
The old city, now a forgotten museum
Returning to the red mountains
And the rut of glaciers that slid inevitably
Up to where the barren branches go
Tapping this early in the forgotten year-
I turn my eyes to look out the window
Knowing that there are ghosts down below
And that I am not even there.