Staying at the Ellington's home in Empire, CO

I am house and dog sitting for Michael and Christina Ellington. They live in Empire, CO formerly known as Empire City.

I have a connection to this little town of 280 people situated in the northwest corner of Clear Creek County. Vachel Lindsay, a poet from Springfield, Illinois who wrote in the early 20th century used to walk here on foot from IL to visit his vacationing family. The Lindsays used to stay in the Peck House, a once luxuriant hotel here in Empire City.

Lindsay was a prairie troubadour who sold his poems and sang for his meals in order to finance his way to Colorado. He was good friends with my favorite poet, Edgar Lee Masters, as well as Carl Sandburg all from my home area of central Illinois.

While sitting in the Ellingtons very comfortable family room today I wrote a poem about Empire. It is as follows:

               Empire City

Empire City, hides in a dark corner of Clear Creek County Colorado, small and humbled over the years with only 280 souls,

But, still large in spirit though now burdened with the weight of a grandiose name conjuring up visions of Persia, Pax Romano, far flung Britain and powerful America.

With vain visions of riches you lured men from the East with tall tales of creeks and rivers awash in giant nuggets of silver and mountains under which lurked thick veins of gold galore and plumes of silver.

With the brilliance of a thousand golden suns, silvery frosted peaks, emerald green forests and greedy miners, Empire City chiseled out of gray granite became the gateway to the Rockies.

With outstretched arms you welcomed a poor barefoot poet who trudged here from the tall prairie in Illinois selling his poems and singing for his meals, a wiry troubadour, a tramp, a vagabond who long ago wrote of Lincoln's ghost lumbering about the streets of Springfield mourning with head bowed for lives lost at Antietam and Gettysburg.

The poet himself, it is said, now hobbles alone at midnight in the dirt streets of Empire lit only by moonlight with his shoulders hunched over by grief, anguished by the blood spilt in long fought wars from Siam to Mesopotamia.

Empire City, you're an iridescent pearl strung on a necklace of now long forgotten hamlets stretching along Clear Creek Canyon, once mighty, rich and luxuriant now steaming up from the valley floor like a chimera, a mirage seen only by the lonely spirits who pilgrimage westward across the Divide.

Tick, tock, tick, tock, the lonely persistent sound of the clock on the fireplace mantle reminds me of my own fragility and of the graves of the hopes and dreams dug in my heart which have long ago taken wing,

I too, like Empire was once strong, rich and mighty but now weak and humble, a shadow hidden in a dark corner anxiously awaiting renewal as a rising Phoenix.

Cities and towns like people must first die in order to truly live. The Prairie Troubadour knew it and Empire City knows it.