We were young in Oklahoma

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We were young in Oklahoma,
Going out into the sun
Of the dry plains’ early summer
And a world we hoped to stun.

Interviews on wavy pavement,
Baking in the morning heat;
Getting home in soaking shirt
sleeves,
Rubbing raw and tight-pinched feet.

Tired today but more tomorrow
As we left our paper here,
There. Unsmiling interviewers.
Under all, sick stomach fear.

No more carefree, smiling autumns,
Drinking coffee, wasting time,
Greeting friends and casually
wondering
What we’d do once in our prime.

Years it’s been since I remembered.
Something jogs, I think again
We were young in Oklahoma,
Only once and only then.

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About Kay Whitaker

Kay Whitaker was born in Tipton, Oklahoma, in October, 1941. She attended Texas Christian University, where she won the Freshman Poetry Contest and was an editor on the Freshman Literary Magazine. She attended the University of Oklahoma, where she published in The Windmill, the campus literary magazine, and was society editor of The Oklahoma Daily. She graduated with a degree in professional writing and worked for a year as police reporter and feature writer on The Daily Ardmoreite in Ardmore, Oklahoma. She then worked for three years as a political writer for the Cambridge Chronicle while supporting her husband through Harvard Law School. In 1970, she served as assistant city editor of The Dallas morning News. She wrote this volume of poetry while living in a cabin the the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia with her second husband, Timothy Travis. Kay Whitaker is deceased.

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