Washington Park

we are in the park
my favorite park
my more-than-a-memory park
nostalgia couldn’t define it
nor love
but passion deep down
into the insides of
who. i. am.

somehow you’ve never been here
he chases down the boy
the girls ride circles
round and round the lake
i tell you about the towers
the boathouse
but just allude to everything else

i could tell you
where the police found us
where i swam across the length
of the pool in one breath
where we hid along
the side of a tree
where i ran away from home for a day
where i fell in love
where i had my heart broken
where i took the baby i watched

it would never end
it would take all day
instead we rest on blankets in the sun
drinking beer disguised
in red-railroad-track cans

you want to rent the giant bike
i tell you what a scam
you pay (how i love you)
and five miles of
delightful laughter ensues
with five kids
three adults
an array of green t-shirts
and we have ourselves
my first and only
St. Patrick’s Day

we are in the park
my park
you have never been here
and i have never been here
not before the beauty of this day

Nothing Short of Art

we sit in central citified sun
sipping smoothies and lattes,
munching on freshly baked croissants
and chatting with strangers
on a day so warm it can’t be
the third week of January
(a beauty we all share
as we peel off our winter coats)

they skip alongside on an impromptu adventure,
moving along the zero street,
playing pig and picking out dates
on ovular stamps in concrete.

we enter the train store
and examine the pure wonder
of details so tiny, humans
standing knee-deep in plexiglass water,
monkeys climbing up a fallen-apart billboard,
and fast-moving trains. one declares,
it is nothing short of art

later i pedal into the wind
around the dam and up the hill
until i see the circular beauty of the lake,
and its curvacious path
interweaves me with a hundred pairs of legs,
all taking advantage
of this day like no other

before i am home
i am home,
and can almost forget
the tears whose all night sting
kept my eyes bleeding till morning,
the two dark, cold miles of separation,
and the hollowness of our words
that find their way
into the poems he wishes i wouldn’t write.

Marinated

on giant skewers
more sword-like than knife-like
they shave off our marinated meat.

we pile it on top of our
quail eggs, turkey salami,
and marinated mushroom salads.

they pop up every thirty seconds
until our plates are smaller than our eyes
and the tastes linger, love in our mouths.

you walk with me across this city, hands in pockets.
we look at all the lights. we stop
for coffee/tea in our bookstore.

the horses are decorated with glittered hooves
and Santa bells, antlers strapped on
and Mrs. Claus at the reigns.

we step into the tower again. the Santa-hatted
door man convinces us to go downstairs.
we laugh until we cry and miss the light rail.

the crisp winter air bites at our lungs
as we walk from stop to stop. images and tastes
boil up within my blood. you keep me warm.

it is three in the morning before we’re home.
the years have marinated, because we never did this,
not once, before we had them.

now it’s more glorious than any gift you could have given me.
was it the meal, the rainbow of lights on Larimer, the show?
i will never know. only passion will i remember.

The Market

it’s still here
this place i knew
where last i came
under these same sparkling
rays of light
as a teenager with friends
where we bought coffee
and chocolate
shipped in from Vermont
where we sat in
these same heart-shaped
wire-backed
uncomfortable wooden chairs
and laughed and laughed
and walked around
looking at expensive
hot cocoas
and liberal media magazines,
the same ones
that line the shelves this evening,
beer and dinner in our stomachs,
i fall in love all over again.

D & F Tower

As stated matter-of-factly
hundreds of times, this tower
(brick-not-steel, pointed
and dominant) was the tallest
building in Denver when

at age twenty-one, like the
pioneers two generations back
(two generations back from me)
my great-aunt Frances walked
through downtown (1937)

We enter it for the first time in
my life tonight, year twelve of
our young marriage. “Finally,”
you say, “something you haven’t
already done,” opening the door for me.

Did she see it? Painted crown molding
on the ceilings, intricately laid
white marble (smooth and cool
against the skin on a summer night),
architecture from a bygone era.

Would she care about the cabaret
burlesque show that emanates from
the basement stairwell? Or did she know,
with her domineering, independent shoes
that carried her here from Kansas,

that, just like the steel-concrete-glass
skyscrapers that have tried to trump this,
it still stands in a changing world,
here we stand in a changing world,
its strength (our strength) unwilling to give up
its place in the heart of the city (of love).

What I Miss from Denver

microbrews (sweet and smooth)
that I can order anywhere I go
restaurants that have a decent meal
and are within fifteen minutes
the skyline with its cash register trademark
that I first saw at age seven
Starbucks (though I’m no daily-doser)
just for its frequency of availability
women on bicycles (though few)
so for once I can blend in
the absence of fleas, mosquitoes,
or any other recognizable insect
the peaks that keep their snow
into the middle of July
and the camaraderie of close friends
who wrap us up with happiness.

Ode to Colorado

Only here will I worry
about traffic jams along the bike path,
runners and bikers decked out
in garishly bright bodysuits
speeding double file
in a race to beat their average
so early on a Saturday morning

Only here will the wind whip up
a thunderstorm that creeps in from
the mountains every afternoon,
sneaking out after torrents
that the dry steppe soaks up
with its thirst for rain
so early in the year’s seasons.

Only here will fourteen miles
vary from century-old Victorians,
to modern multiplexes,
to simple suburban trilevels
tucked amongst the creek that
brought us all here, that connects us
so early in the life of Colorado.

Only here will I raise my girls,
stake my claim, teach my kids
that the beauty surrounding us all
lies within the pedals, the pounding feet,
the mountains bearing weather,
the creek bearing gold, the architecture
that keeps us here, brings us here,
so early in the life of our love.

Colfax on MLK Day

In the entire country, this is the longest continuous thoroughfare through a major metropolitan area. Its collection of every type of store, from spiritual arts to adults only to tattoo artists and nail salons, from record and book shops that beckon a bygone era, to liquor stores on almost every block, Laundromats, and gift shops, makes it more unique than any other street in Denver. But its difference does not stop there: it boasts a combination of modern brick apartment buildings intermingled with renovated Victorian mansions, stone masonry churches and the most architecturally magnificent high school in Colorado. It holds a variety of restaurants that range from Ethiopian to American to Greek, some dating back decades and others replacing old favorites with food served with a twist of contemporary and old-fashioned décor. The small theatres that line up like square building blocks along the north side of the street host up-and-coming bands from around the world. And all along its light-at-every-block corridor on any given day, you will see every kind of person you can imagine, from heavily pierced young artists to conservatively dressed Catholics to families pushing their strollers with young children. And you will also see, at all times of the day and night, endless traffic—people pouring out of the many bars and night clubs and into the multitude of 24/7 restaurants, people piercing and tattooing themselves at two in the morning, people streaming in and out of downtown.

This is Colfax, the simultaneously famous and infamous Denver street, the route to Civic Center Park, Lakewood, and Aurora, the path that leads to everywhere you want to go if you are heading somewhere in the city. And for every hour of almost every day of the year, you can drive on it. But not today, when the nation’s largest crowd gathers for a Marade, a combination of march and parade, to celebrate the glorious leader of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you go, you will stand for hours in City Park, and it will probably be sunny, as it always is in Denver. You will probably hear speeches from the mayor, the governor, perhaps a state senator, maybe even a U.S. senator. There will be a rally at the end with poetry and more speeches. There will be people holding up signs to say that we need to end the war, that you should join their church, that gays and lesbians should have equal rights, that American Indians are the first founding fathers, that the United States should have a Department of Peace. There will be drums of various tones and sizes, some individuals and some small groups, to set the beat for your six-mile-round trip walk.

But what you will really see and hear, as you take one slow step at a time, is a rainbow of people who, despite the varying signs they hold, despite the buses, cars old and new, and other methods of arrival to this point in place and time, have all come here with a common goal: to let loose the burdens of all that hang over our current society, to celebrate an amazing man who led so many thousands of people to a peaceful change, to come together with strangers and treat them as friends, and, with the strength and courage that drives us all to take pride in our country, to stop traffic on Colfax Avenue.