I nod at a pair of slouched graybeards
by the entrance to a Denver Starbucks.
Coupla’ owlhoots, I growl.
Ariel, my daughter, raises her eyebrows—Say what?
You know—sort of like Yosemite Sam’s ‘varmint.’
Waiting for her chai, faster than a gunslinger,
she draws her Sidekick,
checks Dictionary.com
Nada.
Uh-oh, have I made this up?
More clicks, before Google opines
this may be a western regional term
rooted […]
You needed to be 18
to get into the Rainbow Ballroom,
but they let Norm and me in anyway.
Things were different
in this tough Colorado steel town.
We sat near the stage, ordered three-two beer—
the only two white faces
among many tables of black ones.
Contraband liquor flowed,
empty bottles rolled on the floor.
When the band eased into Please, Please, Please,
we were […]
Sex,sex,
Oedipus Rex,
Thieves will have a new master
The scroll spoke
in hand printed gothic
on stained cloth.
Abandoned
by the previous occupant
of my new pad
its words meant little.
Fresh from first-year
college dorm,
I hung it on my wall,
tried to live
by its meaning
for a
time.
Boulder, 1961
(No. 47 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)
Reflections on a subtitled movie seen
in Boulder, 1963
Defeated Japanese soldiers,
abandoned on a small Pacific Island,
argued over what to do,
how to find food. They fought,
killed, eventually ate
each other.
The last one
carried his ragged
childhood doll, like those laced
to kamikaze pilots. He stumbled
to a western bluff where a black
and white sunset oiled calm water.
Sitting on a broad […]
We hike into cold
sandblaster wind that pits
the hides of car finishes.
Miles up a rough
sloping fan into foothills,
we pause, chunk
rocks into sample
piles, record mineral content.
From this we draw implications
about the Rockies’
stony heart.
Clouds part as we leave.
Suddenly
we are blinded
by countless suns,
each reflected from one-sided
rock mirrors polished like shields
by eastwardly
migrating grit.
Thoughts of data and warm
roadhouse vanish,
and
we skip dazzled
through
a […]
