The Unabashed Bouquets Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Upon the higher back of the albatross
It rains, it floods;
And if I am not beautiful by now,
I will be beautiful by then: I can see by the lights
That my father put in
As he whipped me, as I wrote the novels that no one
Reads,
I killed the dragon by which my friends were sewn
But never fed:
Beautiful irony of the butterfly crushed on the super
Fine roadway;
But I am no longer afraid: I still have my dreams,
By my scars,
By my liquor glass- I still have my friends,
Even if I should have died high up on the wild
Back of the buffalo,
Never read, by the red lips of wild flowers, the unabashed
Bouquets the dead Indians dead in the gutters
Of the old fashioned roadways: Again, I loved you,
Erin, but you are too busy serving the truancies of your
Highwaymen to understand my love,
Unabashed and unbred- Aren’t you, Erin;
Yet still my sweet love, my dead light bulb by which
I got to bed every night- Erin,
Amen.