The Iniquitous Garden Poem by Robert Rorabeck

What scars are better than these,
The ones that you will not let heal,
That you tend to like those gardens of sharp
Iniquity,
The hidden wounds,
The immensity of trailer parks and graveyards
Alongside the never-ending causeways that do not
Care,
That do not even hear the music that you sing,
Howling, for where is she now,
The nurse with magical fingers and free
Alcohol. Five states over?
But she isn’t real, she doesn’t call,
And the flowers wilt with sunlight slipping
Over the basin of your jaw,
Reminding you of all those lonely mountains you’ve
Climbed,
Touching you like the mortician for one last show.
Lying you down now in a devastated orchard,
And reading over you;
And looking up as the theatre begins its velvet close
To the unreal sounds of traffic and machinery,
You might see an eagle cutting those blue skies,
Soaring so beautiful
He is too far away to be reminded of you,
And yet even as you are laid low, the iniquitous garden grows.