The Sweet Brown Promises Poem by Robert Rorabeck

I think of you; I turn my head:
The sun is down, the world is in bed:
And all of the night is a fairytale that I cannot stomach:
The ways roll on like a ceaseless zoetrope
Tapping towards the heart of a sleepless paramour;
And everything I have done is wrong and not really hear;
But then I remember how you can really see me,
Alma,
Like a lighthouse who is not blind, and sings even to the most
Horrendous night until everything is calmed,
As America becomes even more brightened and more beautiful;
And I think of you in your room, listening to the choirs of angels
Who are speaking the voices of a language I am better to leave
Misunderstood,
As I think of the footsteps of mountains I have been up to,
But who have done me no good:
While the Aspen spend their silver dollars into their breeze,
While I learn to kiss the Virgin of Guadalupe on my knees and think her
For your brown gifts, and the sweet brown promises, Alma,
That even I know you can never truly give.