The Last Pieta Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Her family in the satin woebegone
As if lying down in a holiday of movie theatres:
Her family the brushstrokes of her fear,
Or my forgotten art- how it fails like matchless arson
To ignite her throes;
But in a bright trailer park I picture her on the west coast
Of Florida,
A runaway, half naked- happy to see the waves
As they brush across her feet as she walks with her first child
Before she knew me:
A religion to walk as if the waves are trying to hypnotize her:
And she smiles,
Waits for her husband. There are fewer cars on the road,
And fewer graves everywhere-
Her parents don’t even exist yet. Right now she can say that
She comes from America- If she is my mother,
It is a guess- or she is my brown skinned muse full of amnesia
As an apiary is its honey-
And she spills her naked self across the sand,
Teaching her son the few words that she believes she knows.