Only Ten Days Till . . .

During my lunch break I stopped in the greeting card section of the local supermarket. I love all the red and pink. I wanted to take 25 to 100 shots, but I was so crazy afraid someone might catch me with my camera lining-up to capture a few photos that I just sort of leaned into the cards and clicked. I took five shots when the fear was too much. So I stopped. I thought, "I've either captured this lovely display of cards or I haven't." Then I headed to the checkout to purchase several packages of cards so that Mr. Fun and I can mail to friends and I never confessed my blip session to the clerk.

Okay everyone, only ten days left. By the looks of the card display most folks are waiting till the last few days to get prepared for February 14th. I continue to think that writing and making my own Valentine cards like Ted Kooser is the fun way to celebrate this holiday. I'm not sure I've got the creativity or the gumption.

Kooser's work that initiated his 20+ year tradition of writing and sending a Valentine poem all started with "Pocket Poem," which has some truly terrific lines:

If this comes creased and creased again and soiled
as if I'd opened it a thousand times
to see if what I'd written here was right,
it's all because I looked too long for you
to put it in your pocket. . . .

. . . I want to be so close
that when you find it, it is warm from me.

He's written another titled "Perfect Heart" that I especially like. But certainly my favorite and Mr. Fun's too is one titled "A Heart of Gold" which uses the image of an old beer bottle. The first sentence of the first stanza reads,

It's an old beer bottle
with a heart of gold.

Then the imagery just gets grand, when the final stanza leaves us speech-less:

Now, from the wet formica tabletop,
it lifts its sweet old mouth to yours.

Now go get the poem to read those fabulous lines between those two stanza (you can probably find them on the Internet). If you'd like to know more about Ted Kooser and his poetry I suggest this link.

That's it for this cloudless afternoon in Southern California with summer temperatures . . . bikini weather, some would say (I'm not part of that some).

That's it for Wednesday!
Rosie, aka Carol