Valentine's minus 5

As we get nearer Valentine’s Day in mid-February, more signs of spring are appearing. Yesterday, wild turkey tracks were found all along a stretch of the road bordering our property. The birds are getting active in anticipation of the upcoming breeding season while seeking previously untapped food supplies.

Meanwhile, more and more raptors are visible perched on the lamps along the local interstate. Signs those birds are heading north again?

Today’s weather feels much like mid-March, a hint of coming attractions, including thaws and melting.

"And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat."

Photo by J. Harrington

Since February is not only the month of Valentine’s Day, but also Black History Month, today we’ll note we’re reading, and enjoying, Amanda Gorman’s recently published volume, Call Us What We Carry. A day or two ago we were particularly taken by the following lines from “Every Day We Are Learning":

Just like a skill or any art,
We cannot possess hope without practicing it.

A poem she recently released, that I don’t think is included in Call Us..., strikes me as being very much in alignment with the themes of Valentine’s Day. What do you think?

New Day's Lyric

by Amanda Gorman

May this be the day
We come together.
Mourning, we come to mend,
Withered, we come to weather,
Torn, we come to tend,
Battered, we come to better.
Tethered by this year of yearning,
We are learning
That though we weren’t ready for this,
We have been readied by it.
We steadily vow that no matter
How we are weighed down,
We must always pave a way forward.

This hope is our door, our portal.
Even if we never get back to normal,
Someday we can venture beyond it,
To leave the known and take the first steps.
So let us not return to what was normal,
But reach toward what is next.

What was cursed, we will cure.
What was plagued, we will prove pure.
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make,
The moments we meet,
And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat.

Come, look up with kindness yet,
For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.
We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,
But to take on tomorrow.

We heed this old spirit,
In a new day’s lyric,
In our hearts, we hear it:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
Be bold, sang Time this year,
Be bold, sang Time,
For when you honor yesterday,
Tomorrow ye will find.
Know what we’ve fought
Need not be forgot nor for none.
It defines us, binds us as one,
Come over, join this day just begun.
For wherever we come together,
We will forever overcome.

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