The Secrets They Can Keep Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Didn’t you see the Indians sleeping
There:
Underfoot, and in their ditches:
Down hill from the monuments and the
Trailer parks,
Where all of the Christmas lights are
Strung-
And you said you loved me, but you just
As easily could have been talking
About baseball,
As all of the pilots come home after
Midnight but never sleep,
As outside of their bedroom windows
On the third stories of yellow
Studio apartment:
You can see dormitories,
And baseball diamonds, and fox
Gloves, and all of the pitiful stories
Of the students who will one day soon
Have to get a job and stop leaving their
Fingerprints in the caverns where the lovers
To sleep through the echoes of
Ambulances and helicopters-
As the roses and the hookers keep to their
Defiled bosoms,
In the flea markets of the Sunday churches,
All of the secrets they can keep.