Farewell FoCo

Fort Collins. Photo by Tim O'Hara 

I arrived in a snowstorm

The thermometer reading -10C (14F) 

The trees were bare, the fields brown

I was stressed and tired and sick

From almost a year of waiting 

To be with my love

And finally, I was here. 

Once upon a time

People came to Colorado for healing

The mountain air prescribed as a curative for 

Asthma and anxiety and neuroses of the soul.

After London, I needed healing.

Fort Collins was not in The Plan.

But providence/luck/fortune/life

Bought me here

And the rocky mountains did their job

Along with the kind souls encountered

Perhaps London was a dream. And Sydney another lifetime. 

In just the past six months, 

My love and I were married 

I performed in my first Shakespeare

Priced row upon row of vintage books

Planted peas and potatoes and tiny slender leeks and

Harvested buckets full of greens

We played board games and card games and made sense of puzzles

We watched our way through seasons of HBO hits, and 

While my love lectured on ethics

I cycled for miles, in sun, in rain, in snow, in biting cold and raging wind. 

In the afternoons, I watched over a small human - my time here accounts for two-thirds of his entire life. 

I wrote the first draft of my one person show

I borrowed books from the library and made ample use of their inter-library-loan program

Reading books from Wyoming and Oklahoma and Arkansas. 

We found ourselves in a circle of friends 

Caring and generous and kind and fun

What took two years in London

Took six months in Fort Collins. 

It wasn't always easy. I couldn't work. Couldn't drive. Was restricted by extreme cold. 

I had bouts of depression and couldn't access counseling services. 

But I was with my love

And it was a wonderful adventure. 

Now, new adventures await

And we must say goodbye 

The college kids. Old Town. Cycling. The breweries. The canyon. The reservoir. The ‘A’ on the hill. Drip coffee. The eerie whoooooooo of the trains rumbling through town. Wolverine and Happy Heart. The Farmer's Market, Jodar Farms and Donoma Farms, The Cave Girl, Mt Everest and Youngs and the Chinese restaurant with the kids behind the counter. OpenStage and CSU and taichi and yoga. The library, the archives, the Poudre River, and the Spring Creek Trail. The park, the lake, running down wide streets. 

An entire town is impossible to capture in list form. 

We leave when the trees are full of green and 

At the tail end of a “wild weather” week -  

Thunder storms, and rivers ready to burst their banks, and the threat of tornados. 

The sky provides a free light show on our final night, and eventually

It rains.  

In the morning, we sweep the floors

Say goodbye to our first place together, 

And close the door, 

Giving thanks

That we have lived here.