The Thorns Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Pulling the trucks to your grotto: Sharon,
Wont you look at our flags: We’ve sewn them ourselves
Out all night above our grandmothers’
Graves;
And we peel out to you, muse of milk and pearled enclaves
Where we have found you running down
Like the surcease of roe
Down from this America of salmon, and we saw you
Like a candle held in mass outside of the Alamo;
And you went away like a mariposa in the wind,
Searching for tiles to do your house in
Mexico;
And the night was in green shades interspersed by rivers;
And you made love to gaunt young cowboys
Amidst those perfect easements while we flew above you
Whispering on tin-can star ships:
There you were floating in a sea mist of pagan dreams:
We saw you floating up the intercourse’s fine young being;
Where you left us thatched to go and rejoin your
Unliving king;
You slipped beneath him, beneath the bend in the river,
Beneath the candle’s hooded flame;
And your shift was doused by earth, and so you once
Again became this night’s most impossible being,
And we worshiped you where we can only lay above you
Our wings tired and torn as if from pages of a living book
Thrust out of its charms,
Hyperventilating and being beaten down like beautiful
Weeds amidst the thorns above your wedded grave.