Strange how the rain comes
on days like this, when blue
in any context is a lie, a scratch
on the sky’s socked-in surface,
and the gutters on the house next door
leak like sieves, cracked and bowed,
dropping water into sidewalk ponds.
We let the sound in when
it suits us, note the downpour
but cannot feel the storm.
Cities wrestle for sky, jostle
for land. Every single tree
in this western town was planned
and planted by hand, century-old
wood sentries still standing
despite fickle Front Range weather.
And each spring in North Denver
amidst jungles of broken glass,
brownfields and bindweed, backyard Edens
wake from their Superfund-site slumber
and prove the naysayers wrong.
We order starter kits, lower the downspouts,
sift our compost and shed our socks.
Next weekend we’ll turn the raised bed,
let it rest a spell. And before we know it
we’re parents, standing over our bright
seedlings, cooing. The tomatoes wake first.
We cannot stop smiling.
Meghan Howes is the director of communications at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. She has a BA in English from the College of Wooster — where she received the Academy of American Poets Prize and the Vonna Hicks Adrian Poetry Prize for an outstanding body of poetry — and an MFA from the University of Montana, where she was a poetry fellow and served as poetry editor of Cutbank. She has been published in numerous magazines and journals, including Ascent, Artful Dodge and High Grade. “Seed Starters” won the blue ribbon at the inaugural Denver County Fair poetry competition in summer 2011.
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