Stranger Poem by Robert Rorabeck

So who is calling you now in the tangled
Tinfoil trees?
No one,

Amidst the red enjambment of junked cars,
Along the wheel less highway of dead pine needles,
Passengers of pornography,
No one,

Who is painting your house with expensive joy,
As mothers hold you up at gunpoint
For grocery money,
No one,

Who is checking on grandmother’s tombstone,
On the windiest hill in dirty America?
No one,

Who is feeding the dogs?
No one,

Or riding beside you to see your parts,
The briars of certain meanings left alone for too long,
Now emotionless,
No one,

The ghosts in their doorless hills,
No one,

The blue tongues of Spanish cl! ts,
No one,

The cities of cadaver horses on the mountain of fire,
No one,

Who sits beside the guitar on the train to France,
Or touches its strings, wishing to sing,
No one,

Or touches your hand at the joy of the river,
No one,

Nor seen the summits with you in their particular light,
No one,

Who will remember the childhood of youthful canyons,
Or hear the hungry calls of birds newly hatched in the quivering
Burdocks,
No one,

Or see the swishing lights of lovers in their bedroomed glow,
No one,

Upon the sea’s strident waves,
No one,

In the cusps of the tearless basin,
No one,

Amidst the tall tambourining aspens,
No one,

No one.