Valentine's Day

I really, really like this holiday -- even if it is over-commercialized and Hallmark makes lots of bucks.

Mr. Fun woke me this morning with a delicious french press pot of chocolate coffee and a gift and card to celebrate Valentine's. The card is beautiful and the message inside is truly unique and heart-felt. He also gave me a bottle of my favorite cologne.

After that we probably spent to many leisure minutes just talking and getting started into our day. Soon my time was gone and I needed to leave to get to the college campus; I had two new classes to welcome and to introduce to the writing classes I teach.

Now it's been a long day, a wonderful day and I keep nodding off. This first week of the new semester has been very good but I am very tired. Before I sign-off I'm going to include a few of my favorite lines from Ted Kooser's book Valentines: Poems --

"To make a perfect heart you take a sheet of red construction paper . . . Don't worry that your curve won't make a valentine: it will. . . . And there it is at last: a heart, a heart!"

"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."

And then one complete poem:


"A Heart of Gold"

It's an old beer bottle
with a heart of gold. There's a lot
of defeat in those shoulders,
sprinkled with dandruff, battered
by years of huddling up
with good buddies, out of the wind.

This is no throwaway bottle.
Full of regret and sad stories,
here it comes, back in to your life
again and again, ready to stand
in front of everyone you know
and let you peel its label off.

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

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
I hope your Valentine's Day has been full of love.

Good night from Southern California,
Rosie (& Mr. Fun), aka Carol