The Sweet Young Candles Poem by Robert Rorabeck

This day trims, and I am not hung over,
So miraculously practiced am I am at my sport,
My lonely
Midwestern daydream: Dreams in prison,
And cars exploded down the careening neck of
A beautiful fire-burst cliff;
The aspens higher up seem to say publish this,
Publish this and we will make love to you,
But I cannot truly hear them and the grizzly bears
Have long since gone and been roped away
By the last of the cowboys farming her boudoir;
And even further back the Mexican sheep herders
Worshiping their virgins in the grottos of
Chicken-wire and other galaxies, keep penmanship in
The reason of the stones,
Crop grass so fine as to make cenotaphs bald;
Maybe they were the first ones to develop a swing-set
For which to practice their religion,
To let their scars apex over the cliffs and the divides,
The folded pages of butterflies
Skipping across the draws of the prairie where the ancient
Indians and their dinosaurish colts are waiting
To blow out the sweet young candles of our Virgin Mary’s.