how strange it is to hear them
in the back seat of our car,
though they belong to us.
wasn’t it only a moment ago
that he and i drove down this road
and stopped at Village Inn for pie,
a Friday night with nowhere to go,
nothing to do, no responsibilities?

they chirp their wonderings like baby birds,
but they are no longer babies
as they sing in Spanish the
possibilities of what color
Doctor Dino, the preschool
take-home toy, will be next year, as he
has changed from blue to red to green
in the hands of oldest, middle, youngest.

Denver, too, has changed since i first,
at age eleven, took a bus across town
with my friend, eating lunch in
the Tabor Center and pretending to shop.
now the light rail has taken us here,
to a Convention Center that didn’t exist
amongst fancy four-star hotels built up
like mocking gods in the face of recession.

he and i, we are not the same either.
there will be no stop at Village Inn,
no pie. instead we listen:
“Va ser… ¡rojo! ¡rosario! ¡amarillo! ¡azul!”
and i think, we’ll never know the color.
our baby will be out of preschool, Doctor Dino
will be in some other little girl’s home,
and these streets? they’ll never stay the same.