Mental Engine Block

My car refuses to enter Denver, Colorado.
In fact it refuses to go over Monument Pass.

I tried gunning it up and over
but the engine died and we rolled backward

against traffic on Interstate Twenty-Five
which is as scary as you imagine.

My car works fine south of Colorado Springs.
I doubt my car’s disfunction is perpetrated by the Air Force Academy

by the Garden of the Gods
or some healing water spirit in Manitou Springs.

I have tried entering Denver on US Two-Eighty-Five
and from the east and west on I-Seventy.

All attempts failed. I took a Greyhound from Albuquerque
and the bus broke down outside Fountain

under the gaze of Cheyenne Mountain
with both NORAD and the Zoo.

Other than this fact, my car is a good car
and gets me where I am going in a timely manner.

Taking Stock

Paul undresses.
He strips behind Denver skyline.

He evaluates his body.
There is no cowboy left in him.

Only the remnant bruises, scars
and mended bones.

He buttons a clean shirt.
He alters a setting in his brain

to Taos, New Mexico
and the mountains behind it,

the comfort there
on the rocky slopes

with a string of tourists
on horses that do most of the work.

Paul imagined his mother’s grave.
Rain pelted it.
A branch fell torn from a tree.
The headstone toppled.

He wondered why his imagination
failed to produce snow
so deep as to hide
the graveyard.

He decided it was because
his feelings toward his mother
were not as cold as snow
or sleet or hailstones,

but more like a wind that injures trees
and innocent bystanders.
Old unexpressed angers
vented into the ether.

Paul planned a drive back to Denver
on some spring day
when the first thaw drips icicles
from tree branches and gutters.

postscript

Today’s entry was posted a couple hours later than usual due to the internet being down in our area for several hours.