wishing you a loving valentine's day

I have just mailed several valentines and put another forty or so into the college post office drop box (tied together and organized in alphabetical order - from lowest CPO # to highest). I painted all of mine this year, as my stationary resources are a bit more limited and I wanted to make so many and also create them personally. I think they turned out rather nicely. In the spirit of the holiday, and because not everyone has written their loved ones a note yet, here are my very favorite love poems. They are not all for romantic love, but also express love in general, or beauty, or friendship and kindness, and I enjoy them very much. Ooh! I also received an anonymous valentine today with a poem on it in my mailbox! I wonder who it could possibly be from? Here's hoping there are sweet gestures of affection in your future.

Song (excerpt)

love was and shall

be this only truth

(a dream of a deed,

born not to die)

but worlds are made

of hello and goodbye:

glad sorry or both

(big little and all)

E.E. CUMMINGS

I confess

I love that

which caresses

me. I believe

Love has his

share in the

Sun's brilliance

and virtue

SAPPHO

A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public

Employment (Excerpt)

My head, my heart, mine eyes, my life, nay, more,

My joy, my magazine of earthly store,

If two be one, as surely thou and I . . .

. . . Where ever, ever stay, and go not thence,

Till nature's sad decree shall call thee hence;

Flesh of they flesh, bone of thy bone,

I here, thou there, yet both but one.

ANNE BRADSTREET

Abigail Adams to John Adams,

The great distance between us, makes the time appear very long to me. It seems already a month since you left me. The great anxiety I feel for my Country, for you and for our family renders the day tedious, and the night unpleasant. . . I want much to hear from you. I long impatiently to have you upon the Stage of action . . . I wish you every Publick as well, as private blessing, and that wisdom which is profitable both for instruction and edification to conduct you in this difficult day. - The little flock remember Pappa, and kindly wish to see him. So does your most affectionate

Abigail Adams

It's not like anything

they compare it to -

the summer moon.

BASHO