In Front of the Ice Cream Parlor in July in Fort Collins

12 miles per hour

96 degrees

Black steering wheel hot as direct sunshine.

The Rockies rise above the end of Mountain Avenue.

You eat peach ice cream at a white metal table

on grey concrete.

We see each other across black asphalt

and wave.

I circle two blocks,

park.

You throw your pack in back

and climb into the pickup cab.

I ask, "How was the opera?"

"Really good. Really funny.

The nazis tried to ban it when it first came out,

but they couldn't stop it."

2,700 feet higher, at dusk,

you open the metal gate under ponde Shining violin, rosas.

Cooler air flows across the mountain.

Grey concrete, black asphalt,

peach ice cream far below us on the plain

opera finished for today.

We've fallen quiet as the mountain forest

at dusk.

I'm glad you’ve come home again.