THE DAY OF MY FIRST SEIZURE
In the morning I listened as the country mountain preacher cast down arguments
and every high thing, then went with friends into Cripple Creek and ate a burnt
hamburger among the rundown casinos. I wanted to spot the ancestral donkeys
of the first gold miners which the town’s folk still allow to range. The shame of it
is, I didn’t, and at the Heritage Museum wearied of prospector stories. At an ice-
cream shop, I treated everybody to a scoop but me. A hailstorm sprang upon the
two-lane highway to Florissant. The ice balls bristled into stars upon the
windshield. Halfway up the gravel drive, I climbed out into the rain wearing a
sister’s sunbonnet and eyed the antlered mule deer that was curled up below the
Ponderosa pines. It returned my gaze. Moss-splotched slabs of pink granite
darkened. Saucers of sugar water dangled from the eaves and the hummingbirds
battled for dominion. After dark, lightning forked over Pike’s Peak. The bones of
dead deer flared up below me, and I scanned the twilit rise for mountain lions.
|