The following poem and reflection is a result of my whimsical musing as to how adolescents and young people are coping with the increasing influence of hormones in their lives. Unless one is locked away in a monastery some place (and even that is not a guaranteed chaste environement) or wearing locked metal chastity belts etc, adolescents will explore and experiment sexually, much to the displeasure and disapproval of us clerics and parents.
Since the invention of the automobile, secluded places to park a car and “make out” has been an active endeavor of adolescent couples experiencing the natural explosion of hormones in their lives. Whether we call those places, “lovers lanes”, Drive-in Theaters, or “watching submarine races” (Ruthie and I went out to the airport quite a bit, “to watch the planes take off from the parking lot” … imagining doing that now in this post 911 time of increased surveillance and camera monitored airport parking lots) adolescent couples continue to seek secluded places.
This poem is a whimsical musing as to how this pandemic has affected this behavior on the part of our adolescents. With the danger of infection so great, how do adolescent couples cope. Somehow, “making out” over Zoom or Skype is just not quite the same.
Here is the poem and the music that accompanies the poem.
An Estampie for Would Be Lovers
Ah, those isolated places where once
cars and bodies huddled together,
the “lovers’ lanes”, in which
submarine races were observed
with no winners posted,
“to score”, an unabashed innuendo
of conquest and shame.
These secluded spots.
grass trampled down by
blankets and cars,
where sexuality was explored,
car windows fogged over
by the breath of its occupants,
shaky adolescent hands
fumbling with buttons and catches,
a stroke here, a grope there,
an indignant slap leaving its mark
across the cheek of the offending,
and the hickey, the mark of Cain,
adorning the neck of the willing.
Only overgrown grasses now
huddle together with overgrown weeds,
hiding from sight these lots
these lots vacant of humanity
and near occasions of sin.
A pandemic plucks the blossoms
off of young adolescent love.
Social distancing hard to attain
In even the largest of vehicles,
near occasions of sin,
minor and major,
literally out of reach.
The facial mask, the chastity
belt for the lips, thwarting
even the most chaste of kisses.
The buildup of hormones threaten
to burst adolescents asunder.
Confessionals as empty as
hospital maternity wards,
I fear for the propagation
Of the human race.
(c) 2020 by Robert Charles Wagner. All rights reserved.
