One year ago today I moved from Colorado

Written by me but generously borrowed from and inspired by

The Spirit and the Soul by Jack Gilbert

One year ago today I moved from Colorado

It should have been alpine athleticism that lasted. Should have been Copper and Vail slopes. But it was not. They were destinations, not the journey. It could have been my students’ names and faces, but there are many to remember. Judith and Julie and Diane lasted. It was wisdom of women that made this woman wiser, and wiser again. It was soothsayer Steve. It was the important love and serious lust. It was Colfax grit that lasted. The strip of tattoo parlors, flop houses. Not Wash Park, but the shroud of brown air tucked over the city, thick enough to pave streets or coat lungs. A glowing cross the size of crusades on the foothill. Mountains of trees suffocated by bark beetles and ready for cremation should lightning strike.

When I was a girl, my mother spoke of her summer days and college job, atop Pikes Peak selling oriental trinkets to tourists. In the evenings she would watch the setting sun cast shadows of the mountain across the plain. Something sightseers never see, but occurs daily.

I-70 mountain traffic, creeping like glaciers down the valley did not last. But cozy homes and hospitality of Friends on Sunday nights and William’s pies and Maya’s tamari dressing lasted. H-Line and the 135 lasted. Hiking Gray’s with Andrew,Quandry with Greg, Chicago Loop with Darcy. The columbines and wild roses. Walking the Highline Canal, under cottonwood tree arches and knowing my grandmother was dying remains in me forever.

It is not about the spirit. The spirit comes and goes. But the soul enlarges us like buffalo and Fat Tire humming in the belly. What lasted is what the soul ate. The way the child knows the world by putting it part by part into its mouth. Not devouring but savoring my way to the Truth. Nestling my life against a that life.

***************************************************
I was taught this summer that it is a practice to study another poet's form and structure by either copying a poem or incorporating your own writing into an established poem. This was my stab at that in recognition of my one year anniversary of moving from Denver. Blogspot makes it difficult to maintain formatting so I apologize for that. At some point I might right about my one year anniversary of living in Iowa.