Towards Heaven Poem by Robert Rorabeck

In ways I bet like fire,
My belly growing pregnant with rattlesnakes and
Liquor- yet, still
I struggle up the impregnable slopes, taking my
Time, and finding my ways
Up the insurmountable- to kiss the lips of god,
My muse striped in the colors of
Mexico:
From here, the traffic looks like the toys of infants:
From here, I can see Mount Esquidilla like a goddess:
She rises still, her neck as white as from opals,
From the juvenile aspens that bud around her
Neck
After the fire, after the grizzly bears- and I take my
Time surrendering to her, counting my prayers
And climbing into a dead tree amidst the boulders
To have another photograph,
To think of my mother’s cradle in the woods of
Colorado now fifty years ago-
To rest like a bird
With my dogs, praying to some god I haven’t even yet
Met,
The road beneath me an endless ribbon that the
Anonymous traffic kisses,
Flooding themselves in the letters of nameless saviors,
Themselves not even sure that the way they are going
Is towards heaven.