Colorado Revisited:1973
You promise you will remember this sunset,
fueled by a red-orange orb that feeds your heart
with the fire of first love in a car
on a road somewhere in Colorado.
It doesn’t take much remembering:
how good the cold beer tastes,
how the music blasts,
how one hand holds the steering wheel
and the other my inner thigh.
We speak a language of new words
sweeter than the Oreos
we said we wouldn’t buy.
I chew on arroyo, mesa, and butte
while you feast on te amo ,
thrice said, as if the words would
fly out the window and disappear.
The bird, almost eye-to eye with you,
whose navigation system errs,
rides down a vortex of air,
a thud enters its body, claims its wings,
right in front of us: the living and the dead.
Years later, that same sun
continues to kick start night
changes the way you look at things,
like the finest sandpaper raises
the grains in wood
to speak in another tongue. Sandra McGarry
