POETRY FEVER

 Dear George, 

 I started taking poetry classes at OLLI in 2015, and I’ve taken them at least once every term since. That amounts to several hundred poems shared with colleagues. I can trace my interest in poetry back to Washington Grade School where we first learned to write in rhyme. Later, as a freshman at Antioch College, I studied poetry more seriously with Professor Judson Jerome who taught me to write in free verse. I was eager to be a literature major, headed for a career in writing, but Jerome convinced me that it wasn’t lucrative so I switched to Psychology. There went my poetry career for roughly 65 years. Nowadays I devote every day to writing and/or revising poems, many of them autobiographical in nature. I was shocked when I was closed out in registration from my Advanced Poetry class this quarter because of size limits, but the instructor let me in anyway. Here is the poem that I brought to the class today. 

Love, 

Dave 

                         Life Puzzles  

Marriage, that most bewildering of journeys 

Two different persons, one single union 

Like ships in a storm 

Or cats and dogs spattting 

How has this anomaly even survived?   

My wife Katja and I, born into alternate worlds 

She from Philadelphia; I, the North Woods  

Friends are mystified, think we’re alien beings 

Yet we’ve stuck together for               

            Sixty-six                         

                        Odd                                   

                                    Years   

My wife came of age on Philly’s Main Line 

A student of classics at the High School for Girls 

French Literature, Balzac and Baudelaire 

Weekend outings to the Philadelphia Art Museum 

Or Wanamaker’s for tea sandwiches and pink lemonade 

The passions of her soul: The Opera, The Symphony 

And following Queen Elizabeth and her royal clan   

Meanwhile             

        my family lived in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula 

A house made of pine in a forest on the river 

Childhood obsessions:             

        Camping at Mason Park             

        Shooting hoops on an icy driveway 

         Trapping otter on the riverbank 

Our family’s yearly highlight:  The U.P. State Fair at Escanaba             

The demolition derby…the freak show…the Country Music Cavalcade 

And,  of course, most thrilling of all: The Green Bay Packers!!!   

So how did we get together?  — such a blur 

But she thought the North Woods romantic 

And I found the Big City EYE-POPPING!   

We’ve attended the opera every summer

Though resistant at the start,              

        I’ve gradually improved  

In August we go to the County Fair 

                which sets my heart thumping 

The goats and the sheep, bloomin’ onions, bumper cars 

My wife loves the rabbits and the ferris wheel

 If not for me, she would have missed out   

I think this must be the secret of long marriages 

Like potluck dinners, each brings different treats to the table