So you’re walking along the trails that used to be farm roads east of Boulder.

 

All all the cows are gone (sad.)

 

But all the gates are open (great.)

 

Because you are caught without hand sanitizer again, and last time you sort of stared at the closed gate, then delicately opened it with two fingers of your left hand, which you then plunged into your pocket, and gasped with dismay, and then you became keenly aware of its new radioactivity when, back at the car, it touched the steering wheel and the cup in the cup holder, on the front door of the house and when you got inside you stripped and washed everything, including yourself.)

 

Anyway, on the trail, the coyotes trot around — confident, dismissive — one right on the path behind you, a commuter. The Indian Peaks glisten sweatily in the late afternoon sun, which casts golden light on everything. The blue sky arches and stretches over the early spring ground which is snowy, or beige. Your body feels better than it has all day, finally allowed to stride out, finally not navigating computer cords and spray bottles of bleach and 43 texts

 

The trail curves gently towards some cottonwoods

 

And just like that you’re sobbing like a child, just sobbing, because every day is an electric shock, and then wet cement — and King Soopers offers curbside delivery of groceries, but their website doesn’t work, and last night you and your husband drove around Pearl Street in Boulder and while you usually avoid Pearl street not to mention judge it, you felt leaden with sorrow at the empty restaurants and bars and fancy clothing stores — and you did not recognize this love you felt for Frasca, the Boulderado, the Title Nine store.

 

And your mother is on the 10th floor of an apartment building in Denver; 90 senior citizens all using two elevators, and your mom is Swedish and so clean and tidy and wears a mask on the elevator and is called about three times a day by you and your sisters — mom! did you think about your shoes! take them off at the door — mom! i’m going to buy you THREE raincoats, wear them in rotation in case you touch the side of the elevator — mom! do you have chlorine spray AND hand sanitizer?

 

But you want her to move in with you here in Longmont and you will not shut up about it

 

You will not shut up, even though:

 

She doesn’t really want to (she’s lived in east Denver for 50 years, and loves it there)
your husband has had a cold for two weeks and now feels tightness in his chest
and you’d have to do some sort of not-quite-quarantine.

 

But your love is not a pretty thing, or intelligent, or helpful. Your love does not give a crap about those things. It’s extravagant and grotesque and next think you know you’ve called your mother from right here on the trail and are sobbing to her BUT I DON’T WANT YOU TO DIE!!!!

 

Which might not be what she needs to hear right now

 

Your love rears out of you like a bridge abutment or a cottonwood trunk — it’s too big for you — the root and heft of it pulls your insides out.

 

You cry and cry. You want the part of the poem to happen where the sky absorbs you and your sorrow, or the mountains lean toward you with deep geological understanding. But it hasn’t happened yet.