(This was dedicated to Colfax, or 15th Avenue, which runs from the westernmost to the easternmost extremes of Denver, taking one through the oldest and best representative neighborhoods of the city, including its famed stadium and all the federal institutions which are becoming to a State capital. At least this was still so in the summer of 1983 or thereabouts, when I wrote this after a late restaurant shift on a big laid-out napkin (it was published that week in “Westword“). Colfax was named after a member of Lincoln's cabinet, if I'm not mistaken – and what if I am. The movement back then - my time, not Lincoln's - of Denver's “upward mobility“ to the fresher grasses of its growing southern suburbia to escape the inner city, was what moved me to write this loving tribute to the organic stretch of Denverana with which I'd grown up. That, and a 90-page poem once read to me just describing Coney Island, also the lovely verse of Walt Whitman. This is all really history now.)
ODE TO THE IDES OF DENVER
(and with respect to the memory of Walt Whitman)
Colfax, queen of the city, I fathom thee not;
Named for a politician, 'tis mete
that you should be the longest running street -
Your arm extends to the east! to the west!
(pray be generous to travelers) . . .
It 'compasses the very breadth of our
native state, our Colorado!
Yea tho' I search the ebbing sun on a summer eve
I cannot span or measure your range;
Your range is the Rocky Mountains,
O road more ancient than Rhodes – in spirit at least!
Yea tho' I search by that fading orb your bounds,
knowing that you lead touring souls
to Golden flowing streams of light beer,
that Capitol of Coloradan hopps
which lies past my eye's scope -
I am too intoxicated to enter there, too intoxicated just now
with the length of your pavement -
Greasy white lines, yellow lines, double lines and
concrete medians are your adornments -
Slipping deftly under I-25 and reappearing
as the great boulevard that thou art -
urbane and familiar.
From Hooker at 3200 block-west
to the „other hookers“ toward the east
you are multi-employed indifferently
as a crossways of many lives
and as many ways of life – yet
still and always,
a street.
The workaday shoe-leather
of bearded bespeckled and believing Jews weathered
your surface upon many a Sabbath.
Tacos have since filled the air with spicy fragrance
mixed with pungeant Szechuan ducks on-the-run,
and the fumes of so many exhaust pipes, trailing
as cattle once did,
between scores of liquor stops, second-hand shops
seven-elevens, delicatessens,
White Spots, Burger Kings and more billboards,
and the gritty soil of honest toil – and less than honest too.
I counted fifty-odd towering babels
on the way eastward, scraping against a clear Sunday sky
while
far behind me the Denver Gold played to a fully-dotted stadium.
You playfully avoid the grand canyon
of Denver's capital dream,
leaving that fare to 17th and the like;
preferring to do honor – and you do – to Denver's Capitol
and to those granite-pillared fellows in Federalist contemplation,
in whose halls no fillibuster yet has e'er matched yours,
you do us homage.
Mother of Denver, terrible Mother – dancing with the
cacophonous ghetto-blasters and girly theatres,
permitting pimps and bag-people
and thieves and junkies
fair pass over your steady stream of white lines.
As well as those of us
who keep our seedy habits at home
when not driving the kids to the babysitter or picking up
Big T groceries,
attending church and the laundromat
or just going to the park to kick off our shoes.
Nourishing all at the feeding trough
of your myriad gas pumps
you kindly exact in repayment only some Goodyear rubber
to paint your pavement's spine.
Extend, extend, old Colfax!
to Aurora and beyond, beyond Chambers, yea,
even until Limon, yes,
distant land of the rising sun, yea,
even to the fields of Kansas, I'll warrant.
Hail, Colfax, you are the hallmark
of what Denver still retains,
oft taking the number-16 and the number-15 over
diverse landscapes,
from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Who shall e'er disown you, Lady Colfax -
I am not afraid to walk with you
and feel the furrows and contours of your years,
the crust of your memories -
Were I to reject you, were I to seek distance between
your bones and mine,
I'd join all of South Denver
in fear of your local color,
your contrasts and your dangers,
your risks and your follies,
the inexplicable pleasure of knowing you, first-hand.
Colfax, and Colfax still, forever yourself.
Long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long
long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long
long long long
long -
Would that this ode were as long as thee.
