Ruby Eyes (For Levon Helm) Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Put your hand on my shoulder.
This world is sitting in the stars.
We live in the working class cul-de-sac
Where the sun is warm,
And all the swords are buried.
There is a mirror in almost every room,
And I could look at myself in them
If I chose to,
But I don’t:
I choose to smile,
Even though I haven’t christened the roof,
And I live with my dogs,
And there is a girl in Colorado who opens my
Mind like a wound,
And where the river winnows calmly,
I’ve been rejected,
And my heart beats in the chest like a rabbit
In its briars,
And the coal is black and useless on this train;
It goes around the Christmas tree
Slowly like a child’s dream.
Against my back,
The waves are an unguent, and by rivers
She could reach me and sleep wealthily inside
Any of my rooms,
But now I am tired,
And it smells like gasoline
But there isn’t anything burning,
And all the pretty girls are down in the weedy
Amphitheatre they keep at the zoo,
Kneeling to the animals
As wise as grandmothers,
Listening to the feral lips who sing underneath
The ruby eyes
So much more beautiful than my own.