Cityscape

Having left my family behind I found myself adrift in the city. There I met homeless angels and wanderers on Colfax Avenue. I would never be this free again.

Cityscape

      I have known the lonely cities with their anonymous multitudes who stared out of the crystal windows of their eyes into my soul. I sat in the park under the cool shade of a cedar tree hearing lions roar across the fence in the Denver zoo. Ducks skimmed the shining surface of the lake leaving a wake of ripples in their path. The lake reflected trees, buildings, clouds and people. The cloudscape overhead mesmerized me. I heard monkeys chattering, peacocks squawking, and elephants trumpeting. An African American couple walked by and paused by the lake. The man was dressed in nice grey slacks and a white dress shirt. He faced the woman with her beige summer dress. He said, “Baby, why pay that therapist to talk when you can talk to me?”

      I saw my own life pass by in a sequence of emotions, scenes, thoughts, and feelings. I felt that somehow that I was connected with the lovers as they lay in the grass kissing, wrapped around each other. I was part of the distant snow covered mountains which loomed over the glittering glass and steel buildings of downtown Denver.

      Perhaps I was on a bus going down Colfax Avenue. An unshaven, disheveled, drunken man with long straggly hair sat next to me. He spoke with an English accent, claiming to be an American born man raised in an English boarding school. He said the kids there beat him up if he spoke with an American accent. He claimed to have designed the skyscrapers we passed. He said, “They built them to reflect outward rather than inward. It wasn’t energy efficient. I asked them, did that reflect the fool without or within?”

      We passed up the hill past the marble state capitol with its gleaming gold leaf dome. I stood holding onto the hand grip as the bus stopped abruptly. I emerged into the brilliant sunlight.

      Around the corner on a side street was a barber shop with a red and white barber pole. In front on the sidewalk was a pole for harnessing horses with a wet sock laid across it drying in the parched Colorado air. I entered the dark cramped barber shop. A plush leather barber chair sat in the back with barber tools on shelves on either side. The barber’s daughter stood smiling in her tight blue jeans and blouse. He told her to go home. She hesitated, then turned around and left still smiling. The barber told me she always was in trouble with men. She’s naive, he said. We talked about the barber’s homeland to the south, New Mexico.

      He hated to leave the family homestead where his Hispanic family had lived for generations. Back home there were fresh chicken eggs in the morning and spring water. He charged me half price for the haircut and said he enjoyed the conversation.

      Again I emerged into the American street with its teaming beautiful faces. Old women walked by carrying grocery bags. Young pachucos in short sleeve T-shirts and tight jeans walked by. Homeless people staggered in a daze. I was in love with them all.

     I stopped at an antique store near the capitol. A woman in black leather cowgirl outfit with rhinestones and tassels smiled at me from behind the counter. She said she was closing shop and going back home to Nebraska. I felt that I too would go home soon. I’d migrate like a salmon back to the terra incognito of the nesting ground where I once belonged.