Passion’s Evolution


Everyone remembers a favorite place of their adolescence.

Whether in the 1930s like my parents,
or onto the 50s, when many of us dreamed of sowing our 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.

Such cautious and hesitant exploration
divining the night time hours
with the growing-up-entry-level of passion,
forced emotions to maintain a degree of discipline
in order to preserve a girl’s 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 with updrafts from valley’s floor,
swirling their return purchase far below on slumbering streets,

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

And thus…

Dreams were created,
memories driving back home became a floating experience,
cherished elementary kisses into love’s acquaintance,
the gradual 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.”

And yet…

Exceptions experience contrary revelations,
passion’s “aha” light bulb projecting the optional illumination.