The Good News Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Predicted in terrible tragedies, even while the veins of god
Were struck in hosannas
Atop the fresh crèches of the mountains, tendered feet looming above
The tangling impotent fetishes of the busses full of tourists
Who crowd the nose-weary passes on
The cinderblocks of busses- everything about them putrescent
To the nose of a sommelier- these are not her bouquet,
Though it was her birthday today: and her body spindled
Outwards across the sub-lunar arcade,
And held thoughts to itself, and kissed her daughter:
And looked as if I imagined her in high school, like crossing the bath
With the first life sized angels who drank form the water fountains
And had bruises on her knees:
And there she was, accentuating the kennels of bricks- dragging whatever
Life there was in that place up by its britches,
And then to college and marriage and now far away:
Over so many canals and estuaries of Mexican honeymoons:
I cannot even say that I want her any more, since I have lived in so many
Trailer parks, and now she is no longer my muse;
But I sing to her sometimes on her birthday, like a wish being bruised,
Though all of her candles still flutter after the wake of homeless airplanes,
As the days herself become warmed- and a family I can never know
Surrounds her- and the silhouettes of those mountains loom down
In a cradle of blessed gods rich in the steeped purples of the high basins
Who shed tears for her, and can only bring her the good news.