The Bravest Of Men Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Maybe we will love each other more in march—
As we each cross over individually
The fields the need to be mowed—not wanting to
Disturb the sleeping saints or anyone else
Who is so preposterous to live there:
The same way that the newest of graffiti
Finds its way onto the desks of my classroom,
As my children shuffle in:
I don't know anything about them, but they
Are like cartoons made to play in a zoetrope
Across a dying man—just little tricks of my theatre
Which seems somehow to yet survive,
Preposterously across all of the newly wedded heavens
Of New Mexico, and the most saintliest of deserts
Where my father still may sell fireworks—
But now he is up in Canada, brushing down his
Horses—they glow for him, and represent something else
To the world that he knows - more than the words
Of the scholars that flit and splashed against him—
The acidity of their salts have disappeared into the snow storm,
While I work and teach from the memories of his
Echoes—but it seems so strange—like pornographic
Science-fiction—genuflected to the pit and the rind
Of the rattlesnake that we, eventually, inevitably—
And unfortunately—and both at the same time,
Must somehow both strive to be
The bravest of men.