Opinion: The poem you can't see

Peter Meinke is one of our community's treasures: an incisive and accessible poet whose work often focuses on the joys and terrors of life in modern Florida. So Meinke was the perfect choice to commemorate in verse the shared birthday celebrations of St. Petersburg, Fla., (its 100th) and St. Petersburg, Russia (its 300th).

Some local officials were so taken with one of the sonnets Meinke wrote for the occasion, entitled Maples and Orange Trees, that they had it inscribed on a wall at the Florida International Museum during the birthday celebration. The poem speaks of stoic hope that redeems despair, and it concludes: For what are our two cities now, if not sweet sites unfurled like sanguine banners signing for a better world?

Placed in such a prominent spot in downtown St. Petersburg, the poem could have provided a bit of inspiration and aesthetic pleasure to passers-by for years to come.

Except it's not there anymore. It was deemed to be in violation of St. Petersburg's sign ordinance -- no one in the city attorney's office could immediately say how or why -- and was whitewashed.

Maybe this was the Florida city's way of establishing solidarity with its Russian cousin, which suffered through its share of oppressive bureaucracy and thought control while under the thumb of czars and commissars.

But this is St. Petersburg, not Leningrad. If the ordinance is really so poorly written that it prohibits public displays of city-commissioned poetry, then Mayor Rick Baker and council members should see to it that it is revised in reasonable ways so that the public can once again enjoy Meinke's work.

Mr. Baker: Repaint that wall.

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