Kissing Peter Pan
by Joseph Meredith

 

Camden, June, 2000

 

A young woman scales the Peter Pan statue

In the park. Peter’s really up there;

He’s at the pinnacle of a twelve-foot

Mountain of bronze mice and faeries,

Rats and squirrels, right on Cooper Street

By the Whitman Center, that looks back at you

With a Greek Revival, gap-toothed grin.

She’s a real red head, with blue eyes and lashes

So fair she looks like a little girl, robust

And pink-cheeked under her freckles; light washes

Through her hair like surf. The way a gust

Of wind catches your breath, crams it back in

Your lungs, that’s the effect she has on me today.

She’s ill-equipped for climbing, thick-soled mules

Instead of Nikes, a baggy shirt both revealing

And concealing her shape (She will make fools

Of men with that shape). Meanwhile, her boyfriend, feeling

His way around a bronze goat never sees the way

 

She maneuvers under young Peter’s arm—

A precarious move, full of daring and grace—

To plant a kiss on his brazen cheek. Though I am old

Enough to be her father, something in that lovely face,

That gesture, moves me in ways that can scarce be told:

I am a boy again for now and will never come to harm.

 

Casting Lots at Purim

Though time and a river come between us,
on this the fourteenth day of the month of Adar
I see you in your kitchen
slicing onions for a meal,
looking out the window above the sink
to the garden I have never seen
but think I know.
I make this happen because I miss you.
It is Spring again, Purim time.
The buds on the cherry have just cracked,
most are rolled up still so tight
they are nearly red as tiny roses,
some like sugar blossoms—pink—on a cake.
Hamentashen, circles folded into little tricorns,
are cooling on a rack by a bowl of raisins.
A perfect paradigm for the Trinity,
I would say, if I were there. See?
One circle with three divine corners,
all of the same essence!
And you would answer in mock bigotry,
"You're such a goy!"

Now the kitchen smells of onions and cookies,
of rosemary and thyme from sunny little pots.
A curly-haired boy throws his arms around
you from behind and presses his shy face
into the backs of your thighs.
His head just fits under the curve
of your buttocks.  He sings,
"I love Mama, Mama loves me,"
while he breathes in your essential smell.

You have tried to tell me the whole Megillah.
How the beautiful, pious Esther becomes queen—
how Mordechai, the honest Jew, cheats the hangman,
serves the mighty Achasuerosh, her king,
and vanquishes the oily Haman (swing your graggers
to drown out his evil name!),
who would kill all the Jews.

But I am such a goy that the only version
I can remember features a king who smokes
big victory cigars while his troops call him "Red"—
a Mordechai with three fingers, dribbling
tobacco juice down his chin—
an Esther, in a sleek Jantzen, who emerges
from the palace pool (where squads of glistening
Jewesses synchronize swim the night away) to be
greeted by a Haman (booo!) who looks
remarkably like Ricardo Montalban
in a baggy 1950's Speedo.

So I'd make a lousy Jew, so sue me.

But the little boy, my heart breaks
for the little boy, because he loves you
so much, and you will grow old and leave him,
and the circle his arms make around you now
will be empty, and no one will ever—
no matter how far he searches—
no one will ever fill it like you.

 

JOSEPH MEREDITH has been poetry editor at Four Quarters, Poet-in-Residence at La Salle University, and Writer-in-Residence at Camden County College. Since 1994 he has taught as an adjunct in the English Department at Rutgers–Camden. His next book, Inclinations of the Heart, is due out in 2010 from Time Being Books in Saint Louis, Missouri.

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