Valentine’s, the day before!

This morning we found ourselves wondering, since Valentine’s is about love and warm hearts and flowers, how it ended up occurring in a very cold time of the year. As we contemplated, we realized that it must have been due to lobbying by confectioners, concerned that their candy concoctions would melt and get super-sticky in warmer summer months. There’s lots more folks celebrating Valentine’s north of the equator than south of it so, February being the last month of winter in the northern hemisphere, it probably makes sense to celebrate Valentine’s now. [Nearly 90 percent of the human population is in the Northern Hemisphere...]

One of Minnesota’s most famous and talented sons, Robert Zimmerman of Hibbing, has written quite a few love poems put to music. Another Midwesterner, Ted Kooser, has a volume of his Valentines published by the University of Nebraska Press.

where would we be without  flowers?

Photo by J. Harrington

Maria Popova has recently published a fascinating explanation of

How flowers gave rise to life on Earth and made possible the human consciousness that came to see a world “thronged only with Music.”

For this Valentine’s Day, and hereafter, we need to include reciprocity with the Earth that provides all we need to live and love on Valentine’s and every day.

Now, speaking of music, not included in the above-linked fan’s selection of Dylan’s best 15 love songs is the one we’ve selected as today’s poem. May your Valentine’s Day, and the rest of your year, be filled with warmth and love, for each other, our kin, and the Earth. We may not want to marry everyone else, but, as Rodney King famously asked “I just want to say – you know – can we all get along?” It would be a start.

Wedding Song

Written by: Bob Dylan 

I love you more than ever, more than time and more than love
I love you more than money and more than the stars above
Love you more than madness, more than waves upon the sea
Love you more than life itself, you mean that much to me

Ever since you walked right in, the circle’s been complete
I’ve said goodbye to haunted rooms and faces in the street
To the courtyard of the jester which is hidden from the sun
I love you more than ever and I haven’t yet begun

You breathed on me and made my life a richer one to live
When I was deep in poverty you taught me how to give
Dried the tears up from my dreams and pulled me from the hole
Quenched my thirst and satisfied the burning in my soul

You gave me babies one, two, three, what is more, you saved my life
Eye for eye and tooth for tooth, your love cuts like a knife
My thoughts of you don’t ever rest, they’d kill me if I lie
I’d sacrifice the world for you and watch my senses die

The tune that is yours and mine to play upon this earth
We’ll play it out the best we know, whatever it is worth
What’s lost is lost, we can’t regain what went down in the flood
But happiness to me is you and I love you more than blood

It’s never been my duty to remake the world at large
Nor is it my intention to sound a battle charge
’Cause I love you more than all of that with a love that doesn’t bend
And if there is eternity I’d love you there again

Oh, can’t you see that you were born to stand by my side
And I was born to be with you, you were born to be my bride
You’re the other half of what I am, you’re the missing piece
And I love you more than ever with that love that doesn’t cease

You turn the tide on me each day and teach my eyes to see
Just bein’ next to you is a natural thing for me
And I could never let you go, no matter what goes on
‘Cause I love you more than ever now that the past is gone

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Valentine's minus 2

It’s Valentine’s weekend. Our tax organizer is almost complete but the HP inkjet printer won’t print a black and white copy of our driver’s licenses because the printer is out of cyan and yellow ink. That design “feature” makes me see magenta (red to normal folks). [We’ll pick up some ink tomorrow, finish copying the licenses and deliver the tax papers to the preparer early next week.]

male cardinal [scarlet, not magenta] feeding on snow

Photo by J. Harrington

At least we’re not up in northern Minnesota, where I read it reached -43℉ last night. That would definitely turn me cyan (blue) with cold. As for yellow, there’s no sunshine to be seen in our cloudy skies today. Meanwhile, last evening a male cardinal (red) arrived at the feeders a short while after a large, mostly black, pileated woodpecker landed on the deck railing only to discover that smaller relations, downey and hairy, had finished off the suet chunk earlier in the day.

As we look forward to warmer weather (oh, do we!) and the eventual arrival of spring, we recently remembered that last autumn the Better Half and I planted much of the slope behind  the  house with wildflower seeds. There’s no way they’ll sprout in time for Valentine’s Day, but Mother’s Day and Father’s Day offer some promise of colorful patches of wildflowers mixed in with the usual grasses. If we’re lucky, the flowers won’t attract more than the typical number of pocket gophers. None of that will happen until after the snow and ice has melted, of course. Would it be easier to accept the almost constant transition from season to season if we didn’t have specific days on a calendar marked asthe start of each season? Valentine’s, or Presidents’ Days are one day events. Seasons don’t now, and probably never have, started or ended as abruptly as calendars would indicate. Something to contemplate during a late winter, early spring, snow storm.

Barn Owl

By Ted Kooser

High in the chaffy, taffy-colored haze 
of the hayloft, up under the starry 
nail-hole twinkle of the old tin roof, 
there in a nest of straw and baling twine 
I have hidden my valentine for you: 
a white heart woven of snowy feathers 
in which wide eyes of welcome open 
to you as you climb the rickety ladder 
into my love. Behind those eyes is 
a boudoir of intimate darkness, darling, 
the silks of oblivion. And set like a jewel 
dead center in the heart is a golden hook 
the size of a finger ring, to hold you 
always, plumpest sweetheart mouse of mine.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.