Robert Rorabeck - Arizona Lullaby

Again, the hollow night is knocking against
My fiery eyes: This sun does strange things to the earth,
As it sinks- No one escapes the depths of the night,
After all the sun is just a sliver of glass in the west
Cutting between the pine bows and my tired though insouciant wings-

The dogs are with me as we begin to sink in unison.
The little one howls, the big one yawns, and I ask them
If they can smell her in the distant perfume over the lazy hills:
Her eyes, her eyes like moonlight in a dream’s pool
When nothing exists in the mirror but art,
And I cannot really say who she is, but my primary sadness,
The constant of the dirge, and the well which maintains
Words in me-

When night is fallen and she is asleep, or as the day is yawning
The drooling dawn, and I am asleep in an Arizona lullaby of
Hooves crunching in the last of winter’s crinoline,
With my ancestors up on the hill swaying not a lick,
Remaining the constant puzzles of the livings furtive pulse;
I search for her in the cool valley, in the lines of shadows
Beneath the quiet cliffs, and only the footsteps speak before
The fiery motes awakenings, and when I stop to listen
If she is my predator or my prey,
Then there is not another sound at all
But for the knelling of the day,

And the postures of arrowheads like fiery directions which
Once tasted the hunted ribs,
And if one should slide into her like a growing pain in
The middle of an exam, then my eyes should linger upon the
Eastern plains and tear, because I imagine all I am
Is but her untouchable wound.

Robert Rorabeck

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