Fifth Volume of Poetry: Falling in Love

By Paul David Robinson

Fifth Volume of Poetry: Falling in Love is my fifth volume of poetry. These poems were written between July 1977 and October 1981. They were written for and about two different women.
One woman dumped me after I fell in love with her in 1977. Even though we never had sex, it took three years for me to get over her.
The second woman became my best friend and then my mistress in 1978. After she moved away in 1979, we kept in touch by letter and telephone. I missed her so much that within a year, I was ready to move in with her and be a family with her and her child and my son. It never happened.
I hope you will enjoy reading and learning from my life experience. I try to give you a hint of all the feelings I had as I wrote the poems. Every one of us has to struggle to be good and kind and loving.
I have loved many girls and women in my life. And a part of me still loves them all. I wish you a lifetime of loving and caring for others and being loved and cared for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul David Robinson
• Release date: Jun 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310265716

Paul David Robinson

Dear Reader,I've been writing stories and poems for sixty years. I have a closet full of rejections and this year I decided to e-pub.The first novel I chose for this is dedicated to my wife, Carolyn. I wrote it in 1998. It is entitled: Summer. It is about pain and suffering, the difficult choices people face, and how love can overcome anything.As a pastor and theologian, I do not separate the sacred and the profane. The difference is in the human mind and not in life itself, just as evil is in the human mind and comes out of the choices people make and not from the devil who made me do it. The devil has nothing to do with it. We are the ones who choose to do evil or good. The whole world is in our hands. Enjoy the books.Paul David RobinsonReverend Paul David Robinson,BA, MDiv, Pastor, Retiredhttps://www.pauldavidrobinson.comhttps://www.pauldavidrobinson.com/blog/

Book preview

DEDICATION

To all the girls and women I have loved.

From the Back Cover:

Do not be discouraged

Be strong in yourself

I who love you

am with you

In mind and spirit and feeling

Though we are physically apart

you have my heart

And when we get together again

even if it is only for a moment

We will renew our love

with a caress.

Paul David Robinson

August 27, 1980

From Poem 619 on Page 282

Cover Design by Katrina Joyner

TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR

Fifth Volume of Poetry: Falling in Love

POEM/LETTER

Dedication: To all the Girls and Women I have loved

From the Back Cover: Poem 619

528: I woke up this morning

529: Why can’t your heart and your mind

530: I began a letter to you last night

380: Somewhere there is shining

531: It is 4:15 AM. About two hours ago

376: Where do you begin?

532: The other thought was this

533: Writing to you is difficult

534: Getting to know Student

535: What is it that you should do?

536: How do I begin to share this insight?

537: Strange this awaking of my heart

538: I’ve been immobilized all afternoon

539: I had another dream. We were riding

540: Sometimes in Springtime the Autumn

541: It is the fear of losing you

542: I am feeling really sad.

543: The clock has 12:45 AM

544: After re-reading this material

545: The following poetry I wrote this evening

546: And as the pain lifted from the weight

547: One more thought, Student

521: Silently how silently the teardrops do fall

548: I am a gift to all I meet

549: Many thoughts from previous letters

550: I apologize to both of you

551: I really feel sad now, after reading your

TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR

Fifth Volume of Poetry: Falling in Love

POEM/LETTER

552: I know now that we could visit and talk

553: I love you, Student.

554: Oh, Student, when I write to you

555: Dear Joy, it is with a closing of my heart

556: I have written several letters

557: O God this feeling in my heart

558: I hope you receive this letter

559: This decision-making is beginning

560: Oh, Student, you bless me with your

561: Nic, my son, went to Chicago

562: I finished reading Live All Your Life

563: I enclose a letter I never mailed earlier

553: I love you Student (reprise)

564: While reading Philippians

565: Student, you were the catalyst

566: The voice in my mind or dream

567: I like you. I love you. I wish

568: Joy and I have a no fault divorce

569: After I left you Friday night

570: I have raised the same question

571: I just said, I’ll stay married to you

572: I shall wait patiently for peace of mind

573: Being consistent is not one of my

574: Peace is mine with sadness

575: The grief is catching me now.

576: All I want to do right now is be with you

577: I want to die

578: My feelings for you are so deep

579: Last night when you called

TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR

Fifth Volume of Poetry: Falling in Love

POEM/LETTER

580: The pain I feel is so deep

581: It was just a brief affair

582: I add to this letter, because I love you

583: This will be the last time

584: To lie in the arms of my love

585: There is a secret part of myself

586: I feel your pain. My leaving you Alone

381: I do not believe they prayed about it

587: A part of me died today

588: As little as I received from Student

589: I care for you so much

590: It has not been a month

591: As looking in a mirror

382: I stand upon the sands of time

383: I feel trapped and frustrated

-----: I am dead and dying deep within myself

384: I feel like committing suicide

593: Jesus did not care @ human parentage

594: The above is the way I saw

595: Being with Student was like being

596: It was easy for Student and I

389: I offered you friendship you gave me

597: I feel a need to clear up a couple

598: Nine months later and I still

599: You would not believe the number of

600: I had not realized how deeply I feel

402: To be incorporeal - disembodied

601: When you said Goodbye

602: When you left without feeling, I died

TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR

Fifth Volume of Poetry: Falling in Love

POEM/LETTER

603: Somewhere I am crying with you

403: Forgetting isn’t easy

404: I can’t cry The emptiness is dry

405: When I felt this way before

407: Can’t Decide Whether she is child

604: So much of what I want to say

605: I called person-to-person

606: I am very sorry about calling when

607: Let me say again, I am sorry

608: I don’t know why I mentioned

609: When you read my letters, love

610: It seems that I think of you more

611: Are you so beautiful

612: Mistress, I want you I may not be free

613: I keep wondering where all these

614: I will write again later

615: I dreamed about you last night

616: It is difficult for me to tell

617: I am not and have not been angry

618: I am glad to hear your babysitting

619: Do not be discouraged

620: I’m a little sad at the moment

424: What can I say? You wouldn’t quit

425: You didn’t call me

Dear Reader

Fifth Volume of Poetry:

Falling in Love

The first time I fell in love was in 1953. I was eight years old and I fell in love with Karen. She was about my size and weight. We could wrestle. We could curl up in a blanket together and giggle. We could pretend we were married and had children. Our younger siblings played the part of our children.

She had green eyes and auburn hair. I was a blue-eyed blonde.

After I came back to the USA from the Philippines, I fell in love with Colleen who lived across the street. She reminded me of Karen. Colleen and I were going to be in the fourth grade. I looked forward to seeing her every day.

However, when school started, I went to public school and Colleen went to parochial school. I never saw Colleen again.

In fourth grade, I saw this beautiful girl with brown eyes and jet-black hair. Oh was she cute. She had a beautiful smile. I loved to hear her laugh. But I was so shy I never said a word to her. I just looked at her from where I sat at my desk any time I had a free moment.

Her name was Linda Campbell and then I heard it was Linda Ritchie. Her parents were divorced. I felt so sorry for her. She didn’t smile or laugh as often the second semester.

We moved to another town. I was in fifth grade. One night, I dreamed about Karen. We were in the Philippines together. I was driving the mountain trails in a jeep with Karen beside me. It felt so real and we were so happy together. Then I woke up and I was alone in my bed. I was eleven years old.

In the spring of 1956, I began to have wet dreams. I dreamed about this one girl. I have no idea why. I knew who she was but I had never paid attention to her before.

In my dream, I was naked and sitting at my desk and feeling like I had to go to the bathroom. Then I peed all over the walls of my bedroom and I kept peeing. I thought I would never quit. When I woke up, I was in bed under the covers and there wasn’t urine anywhere at all. I got up and went down the hall to the bathroom and went back to bed.

When I was in school the next day, I looked very carefully at the girl I dreamed about. She didn’t seem out of the ordinary to me. But I wondered about that, the rest of the year.

That summer I heard that she ran away from home. Later she was found at another house in town living with the family of an older boy that she loved.

When I went to church camp that summer, I fell in love with a girl in two days and I never saw her again after the week was over.

In the sixth grade, I liked two girls. One had brown skin and short curly brown hair; the other girl had pale skin and long wavy black hair. I would have had difficulty choosing between them. However, that wasn’t necessary; I never said a word to either of those girls. I was too shy. I kept my feelings to myself.

In seventh grade, I was too depressed about the move to a different town to think about girls in the new town. However, my parents took the family to Lake Geneva Wisconsin to a family camp with my mother’s sisters and their husbands.

There I met Laurie Crandall and fell in love. Laurie was a platinum blonde and I liked the way she looked in a swimming suit. I was twelve years old; she was eleven years old.

Even though I played my piano recital piece for the whole camp, I was so shy I never told Laurie how I felt about her.

Laurie travelled with us part of the summer and was a friend to both of my sisters. I liked seeing her every day, but we hardly ever said a word to each other. I just looked at her and wished.

In eighth grade, I was in love with two girls again. They were best friends. One girl was a blue-eyed blonde; the other girl had auburn hair and hazel eyes. I never said a word to either girl about my feelings. I did write poetry about it. (Later I burned everything but one poem that I would be too embarrassed to print.) The girl with hazel eyes moved away that summer. I never saw her again.

In the ninth grade, I was still in love with the blue-eyed blonde, but she was a year younger. She wasn’t in high school yet. So I looked at a girl with freckles, auburn hair and green eyes; and when she wasn’t in sight, I looked at a girl with brown skin, brown eyes, and straight black hair.

The girl with green eyes moved across the state line. The girl with brown eyes moved away. I was so shy I never told them how I felt about them. I just looked at them and wished.

When I was a junior in high school, I took the daughter of another minister to the prom. She went to a different school and was a year younger and could not stay out past midnight. I took her home and went back to the all-night party at the bowling alley. I dated her a couple more times and broke up with her over the summer.

I dated one of my sister’s friends my senior year. We had a connection. When I was in eighth grade and she was in seventh grade, we held hands all the way home from church camp in the back seat of Mrs. Riffle’s car.

After our date in 1963 to an away basketball game, she told me that I was going away to college and she wanted to get married and have a family after high school. She said that our goals were incompatible so she would not date me again. She certainly knew how to let her mind control her heart. If we were soul mates, we never got the chance to find out.

I don’t remember having a date for the prom my senior year.

When I went to college, I fell in love with a girl I dated during hell-week. I never told her how I felt and I never dated her again.

The next spring, my sister was a junior. I went to my sister’s prom with her senior friend. That summer I began to date another friend of my sister who would be a senior in high school with my sister.

That spring this girl was admitted to Miami University of Oxford, Ohio. If she had come to Otterbein College, I may have married her. We dated for about a year and a half.

The summer of 1965, I met a girl at a picnic. I began to date two girls at the same time. I had feelings for both of them and could not choose. They were both attending Miami University and I got into an embarrassing situation. I did not handle it well. I stopped dating my sister’s friend first; then I stopped dating the girl I met at that picnic.

The following spring I fell in love with a transfer student and broke up with her in June when I thought I caught her in a lie. To this day, I do not know the truth. When I calmed down, I called her to apologize but she wouldn’t return my telephone calls. I gave up on her and dated another girl near where my parents lived.

This new girl and I talked about the meaning of love and weren’t sure if there was such a thing. However, we did know what companionship was and we enjoyed each other’s company. This new girl was Joy, my future wife.

Eventually we became sexually active and I asked her to marry me so that I wouldn’t be alone the rest of my life. In addition, I told her that I was probably sterile and that I would expect her to be artificially inseminated if I couldn’t get her pregnant.

She promised to do that as well as finish her college education and have a career. Under those conditions, she accepted my proposal. We got married in 1967.

I learned that there are worse things than being alone. Although we had sex every morning and every night, we were in and out of marriage counseling from day one.

She did not follow through on any of her promises except the promise to make my life miserable.

When she knew that I was leaving her, she went back to college. She finished her degree and started a career after the divorce.

In March of 1977, my wife forced me to request a change of parishes. I had served that parish for five years and did not want to move. I had developed a routine and was comfortable. I would have had to start an action of divorce if I had wanted to stay in that community another year. I was not prepared to do that at that time and a divorce may have ended my career at that time as well.

I was the sole-breadwinner. Our son was only four years old. I wanted to go to graduate school for a PhD if I did not remain a pastor. There wasn’t time to find a PhD program, so I asked for a move and remained in the marriage.

I did not want to accept the parish offered to me. My wife was ecstatic. They were her kind of people, she told me.

I accepted the appointment against my better judgment because my wife pressured me to do so. At that point, I promised myself to divorce her as soon as it was feasible. With that mindset, I prepared to leave one parish and move to another one.

At the annual conference that June, I met a young woman studying to be a pastor. She was sitting by herself in the back of the auditorium. I sat down beside her and we got acquainted.

As a pastor, I have met hundreds of women and girls. Only rarely have I met someone where there was an immediate rapport and mutual attraction.

Student (not her real name) and I had lunch together at her temporary quarters. The water and zucchini bread we shared was like having our first communion together after marriage and before sex.

We were the same age. She was pursuing a second career and I was moving to a new parish. She was two hours away from Seminary where she had a support group. Once I moved, we would only be about forty-five minutes apart.

After I moved, she called me and wanted to talk about her frustrations. I was half an hour away or less, if we met at a park halfway between our parishes. Student was lonely because she was alone; I was lonely because I was in a marriage of convenience and not of love.

The first time we met at the park between our parishes, we talked about her concerns. Then I told her about a dream I had the night before. It was a very involved dream. I told her that the blonde girl in my dream may have been her.

That was a lie. I knew who the blonde girl was and it wasn’t her. It was a girl I knew back at my former parish who graduated from high school that June.

Student was quite intrigued with the dream. She didn’t have dreams as elaborate as the dreams I had most of the time.

A couple of days later, she called me and asked to meet with me at the park again. She told me that she thought that the girl in my dream was my female-self.

We talked about dreams and what we could learn about ourselves from dreams, from the books we read, and from conversations with a friend.

We enjoyed being together so much that we met once or twice a week to talk about everything. She was expecting to be a single woman in a career usually belonging to men. I thought I would be a friend and colleague and, possibly, her mentor.

Falling in love was the furthest thing from my mind. Yet the more time we spent together, we began to feel as though we were spiritual twins and maybe more.

I never told Student that my wife forced me to change parishes. I never bad-mouthed Joy to Student. My focus was on the relationship with Student as it was: a pleasant surprise. I wanted to enjoy being with her without expectation of illicit sex or exchanging Joy for her.

The poem-letters in