Tales from the Park Side » peter meinke http://paigeorloff.com/blog Life, motherhood, existential crisis. Oh, and moving from Hollywood to the farm. That too. Fri, 18 Jun 2010 03:39:31 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 And One More That Spoke To Me http://paigeorloff.com/blog/2009/01/29/and-one-more-that-spoke-to-me/ http://paigeorloff.com/blog/2009/01/29/and-one-more-that-spoke-to-me/#comments Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:49:48 +0000 Paige http://paigeorloff.com/blog/?p=439 The funny thing is, I don’t have specific nostalgia for my first love (sorry, James–but I’m sure you feel the same!) but rather for the feeling that kind of love engendered at the time. Thanks to the Writer’s Almanac, of course, for both of these. I love my daily dose of poetry.

Everything We Do
by Peter Meinke

Everything we do is for our first loves
whom we have lost irrevocably
who have married insurance salesmen
and moved to Topeka
and never think of us at all.

We fly planes & design buildings
and write poems
that all say Sally I love you
I’ll never love anyone else
Why didn’t you know I was going to be a poet?

The walks to school, the kisses in the snow
gather as we dream backwards, sweetness with age:
our legs are young again, our voices
strong and happy, we’re not afraid.
We don’t know enough to be afraid.

And now
we hold (hidden, hopeless) the hope
that some day
she may fly in our plane
enter our building        read our poem

And that night, deep in her dream,
Sally, far in darkness, in Topeka,
with the salesman lying beside her,
will cry out
our unfamiliar name.
“Everything We Do” by Peter Meinke, from Liquid Paper: New and Selected Poems. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991.

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