CLOUDY CONTRASTS
Lying on Colorado manicured lawns,
I follow predictable cloud paths-
born, growing, dying.
Not so boring living here-
Pretty, circus-style scenes on Pearl Street,
touristy voices amplified
echoes from Flatiron Peaks.
Still, I’m so missing Santa Fe mysteries-
mesmerizing colors of a kaleidoscope sky..
heart racing wildness stirred up
by mercurial clouds, shape shifting
through refractions
of billowing sand and sagebrush-
light beams in prisms
of broken glass and shattered dreams.
My New Mexico friend
calls Boulder, ‘wonder bread country.’
Could it be he secretly envies
the trust fund youth cultured confidence
of ubiquitous riders on designer bikes -
polite, pure-bred dogs, properly leashed,
jogging along well groomed wilderness trails,
unwinding at dusk with cans
properly tossed in labeled recycling bins?
But how can a frat keg at midnight compare
to the dawn’s early beer
before a grueling day’s work
from the Barrio to the plaza?
Oh how I long for somersault tumbleweed..
for suddenly transformed skies-
crystal translucent blue-white on the right,
ominous dark, death eater black on the left-
with myriad shades of gray in between.
No longer do I hear
Morning’s multilingual murmurings
of weary folk whose homes have been
Reclaimed by retired Hollywood émigrés.
In Boulder I never encounter
old cars driven till tires fall off in mid streets,
till paint cracks like wrinkled, red skin.
Still I continue to dream, not of svelte skiers on
snow seeded mountains,
But of drum beats pulsing, primeval,
of peace pipes ascending
in swirls of sacred smoke.
