A Poetic tribute to the place and people I’ve called home for nearly two years, especially as I prepare to move on and carry you with me, Colorado, in the next chapter of my life overseas. All my love:
The world ends west of the Colorado Rockies–
Or so I’m convinced standing at their feet.
I suppose to myself, I’ll walk east around the earth to finally see the other side,
Since I’m often wont to take the long way home anyway…
Here, the sun sinks off the tattered margin of a dusky canvas,
With thinly stroked, blanching colors that leave you
Breathless in the sparse air of any afternoon haze.
Thick is the blood and iron the lungs of the souls who settled here.
They are tethered to the mountain roots like astronauts, at home at the end of the earth,
Buoyant dreams and calloused palms pressed up against the ceiling of the sky,
Outlasting and violet as the sage that erupts with spring
And ends only when shorn on the point of winter’s finest spear.
They will never surrender.
…And I am sure to miss them.
As the sun tumbles and the moon soars, I’m certain that every glittering hearth light is a star.
And I am driving downhill into the universe
Until all at once, they lift from the valley crags and nest in the sky,
Off the map and out of reach.
Even now, with the air washed white in porcelain-tundra light,
When cornflower blue drifts breathless, over your barren soil,
And the fog lingers a little longer to wait for you,
You do not move, Colorado–
To spite the cosmos around you.
Liquid landscapes melt off the backs of migrating birds,
Molting rivers running downhill and south,
Though the blooming snow on trees will thaw by midday,
And meerschaum petals, coarse as barbed wire but brief as tumbleweeds,
For all their bravado, will soften like everything else in sunlight.
After comparing one side from the other,
At least it’s clear which way the wind blew for awhile.
A bird lover here told me, there is no such thing as a seagull.
The sea just seems to be where gulls often land.
Every one you see here isn’t lost, just looking for home in the snow drifts,
Always further than expected and nearer than most think.
And the undertow of an eastbound tide is calling me out again.
…But you, Colorado, will never move to please an omen.
These days, I find I’m waiting on the crocuses,
Always looking down, leery to crush underfoot the hope
That springs up quickly
And soon enough steals away.
For all its candor, clear as dawn and pale as a wishing star,
The herald of spring is nearly gone again.
And so am I despite myself.
For the moment, I am lost in the leaves, caught between the cernuous folds of
Here and now, now and then, or maybe later,
Along the crests of undulating hills and mountain swells
Where the craven columbine bobs, forbidden to the hand.
And not the worse for wear, I think,
But you have touched me, Colorado.
When the seasons convene at the table of single day, such as this,
And I shed the fickle layers of my dusty skin to the sky,
I will take you in my pocket, and I will plant you as a home
In every foreign place my toes curl over more giving soil
To make them hard and primordial as I now am from the impact.
And then, not a one will be anything but my Colorado.
ichosetheone 