When She Isn'T In My House Poem by Robert Rorabeck

There you are, a pieta drooling the honey of
Her children into her lap-
The last curse of beauty serenades by the
Feral cats,
As the songs of the habitually lonely continue
Around her- as I slept on her roof,
And wrote to her so many rosy tombs
Underneath the ripe bellies of the
Helicopters,
And underneath the jump rope of the stewardesses
In their airplanes-
What a delight, say the church goers on
Sunday underneath the graveyards where their
Grandmothers are buried alongside the
Catholics and the Indians-
Strange per severances that don’t always have to
Survive-
As she culls her children again to her womb
Amidst the lilacs,
And this is how I sing to her when she isn’t
In my house,
And yet doesn’t have to be alone.