Passion Flats Foreshadowing


Everyone remembers a favorite place of their adolescence.

Whether in the 30s like my parents,
or onto the 50s, when many dreamed of sowing their oats,
or onto the 60s where love-ins, peace and pot ruled,
pushing passion’s meandering history through the 70s
and on up to the present day.

Way back when, the parking lot of a monument
celebrating a state’s discovery
emblazed with “This is the Place”
sustained multiple meanings
as a generation of teens in their under-slung cars,
vied each night for the best parking places.

How innocent that time,
where fogged up windshields
maintained curtain-like privacy,
where Doris Day, Perry Como and Frank Sinatra
kept the night filled with ballads of romance.

So cautious and hesitant exploration,
divining the night time hours
with growing-up’s entry-level of passion,
forcing emotions to maintain
a degree of discipline in order to preserve
a girls dignity and pride.

Such memories were filled with the night’s darting wings,
of warblers and wrens, occasional black birds,
and the always reserved eye of the owl perched atop a tree,
while winds carried cottonwood, aspen and birch leaves
across the lot, ebbing and flowing onto
updrafts from valley’s floor,
finding purchase far below on slumbering streets,

All the while,
a moon bathed whiteness peered
into the scrub oak and trees,
a mischievous cosmic eavesdropping
smiling on youth’s limited time.

And thus…

Dreams were created,
memories cherished,
driving back home a floating experience,
one’s first kisses of love’s acquaintance
slowly becoming the introduction
into a philosophical reality Zorba made famous:

“Am I not a man? And is a man not stupid?
I’m a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything.
The full catastrophe.”