Jenn Habel

And Then, of Course, There’s Hope

At 7:30 p.m. on a Tuesday in April the doors

to the Pikes Peak F & AM Lodge

on Prospect Street are open. Members of that

Prince Hall Affiliated order smile

and nod as two doors south a woman says, "God,

he’s unbearable," then laughs.

The last sun slants her bared feet, free and rich

as the gold for which the state’s

first Masons came; surely the owner of that blue

hound on Custer will be home

soon, and it’s possible the group’s convened

in the Counterpoint building

for some purpose other than to keep gays off

the school board or city council.

I don’t know why another Monet tacked to some-

one’s wall makes me think

the world will go on. Why one stunted daffodil

outside a rental house and I’m

alive. The International Political Economy major

had a question for last night’s

activist speaker: Given all the injustice she’d been

discussing, how does she stay

hopeful? She threw her black rope of hair over one

shoulder. My life’s pretty good,

she said. My kids and I laugh a lot. We like to dance.