Boulder Poet Having a Drink
‘Tell me,’ I said to a woman sitting in a bar in boulder, physically distanced, and speaking through a mask that conveniently hid my real age, ‘why is it that arthritis attacks the joints I need the most?’ To be fair, her response was muffled, but didn’t come over as polite or caring. Maybe the question itself revealed my age, or my obsessive concerns about my aches and pains in this contagion affected society. I might have tried a different tact to engage in conversation thirty years ago, having had a double whiskey chaser, and back then contemplating my future as an author. There’s no reason, not one I can bring to mind, why I’m not a successful author, playwright, or have a comedy series on the BBC.
From there to now, I’ve been locked up for various reasons, and fired from several jobs for trivial matters — stationary theft and tea money fraud — a bit of piracy— and now have perfected the art of kissing the butts of influential Americans for very little reward.
So, it’s perhaps obvious that I’m a man knowing few of life’s victories, having been accused of choosing easily reachable goals. But that said, I smile about three times a week, which is not bad considering it took twenty-three years to get my wife off my back. I had help when a speeding ambulance with flashing lights drove right over her. When the police came, I was standing looking up at the heavens with my hands together. I think the cop thought I’d been heartbreakingly cheated of my wife’s company, but I was thinking: This is just brilliant, thank you Lord.
Before Covid-19 I frequented the pubs, played a little golf, saw a bit of humor in everything, even suffered through the daily effects of beer induced migraines before returning home to write a story. Writing has always been more of a disease than a hobby, and well, writing to a deadline was a heartbreakingly inefficient way to exist. Sometimes, I’ll go looking for a story, even put myself in harms way as I did daring to speak to the woman sitting in the bar on Boulder’s Pearl Street. Okay, maybe not harms way, but certainly in some corner I could not escape from. I’ve lost the art of being appealing to a woman’s interest, even when my personality is hidden behind a mask. I hear conversation; perhaps murmurings would be a better description, voices wearied by separation anxiety, or alcohol, or Newsomonia.
I don’t remember much about the way she sat at the bar. I was wearing jeans and a Colorado T-shirt, on the front saying, What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, except bears will kill you.
When finally she asked, why are you in Boulder? I could have said something reasonable, like here for the birth of my first grandchild, but instead I explained that I am a visionary. She smiled. Another romantic, she replied. I offered truthfully that I am yet unknown. Yes, she responded. I love all poets, in love with ideal beauty. Isn’t this you, why you’re in Colorado? What else can you be but a poet?
There was nothing to be made of my face. And I could neither tell if she were Liberty or Muse before she continued, all you poets…you love, you hope; that is all. Hold out your hand to me, she said, I explained I was keeping physically distant. I was once a poet, too, she said. I wrote down my dearest beliefs, my hopes, my feelings, all the things that poets do. I lived my youth in an age of hopes and fantasies. Like you, touched by the finger of muse.
From that moment I adored her. The way her hair was pinned to the nape of her neck, just a few short strands escaping from her Colorado baseball cap. Her mask, did not hide her heart. I did not say a word, how could I, being caught as a dreamer up against the poetic heart of transport of joy? I left before I finished my drink. Poetry is infinitely more acceptable than poverty.
Our truths were different. Hers was more genuine.
Let’s have another drink sometime.
