Garden Park
Oct 5 2013


A small park
that ends in a low stone wall,
where a steep drop-off

over-looks the brightly lit city
and in the distance, the lake,
its slate-grey depths
brushed with moonlight.

Where after dark, cars park
like boats pointing out to sea,
straining against the pull
of this small northern place.
I cannot see
behind the tinted glass,
radios thumping

eruptions of laughter.
But I can see the glowing ash

of cigarettes
in nervous hands,
hear suspensions squeak.
The things that have always gone on
Saturday nights
in bucket seats.

Like flocks of small birds
who seek safety in numbers,
swooping into turns as if one
breasts lighting up

in unison,

young women and men

are drawn together

here, on the edge of the park,
cruising, idling

steaming-up cars.
When everything is new,
and they will always be beautiful
indestructible.
And who would resent the comparison
if I told them their parents
had also met
in the back of a vintage car,
here, on the edge of love.

We all think
we have discovered sex
for the first time ever.
But like the fluttering hearts of tiny birds
their all-encompassing heat
is nothing
compared to the ancient lake,
that sits, impervious,
cooling the still night air.

On a recent Saturday night, I walked the dog right instead of left. We ended up in a nearby park that is just as described, and is apparently a hot make-out spot: idling pick-up trucks trading places, the kind of cool cars young men yearn to drive, and low-slung sedans cruising by. I was struck that despite this being 2013 -- an era of social media and sexual freedom -- it could just as well be 1950. It was the old cliché of the more things change, the more they stay the same.

On display was the transience of youth and beauty, the solipsistic hubris of the young. But in sharp counterpoint was a powerful sense of timelessness: the generational repetition of the familiar rites of passage; the brooding permanence of the ancient lake.