Passion’s Arrival

Everyone remembers a favorite place of their adolescence.

Whether in the 30s like my parents,
or onto the 50s like myself,

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

at Passion Flats.

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 nighttime 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 blackbirds
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 drifted
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.”

(Of course, there are exceptions… I think.)