If you are a long time follower of my blog, then you know that today is one of my favorite holidays and you know that I share poetry, as well as art and more (sometimes).

Happy Valentine’s day!  I used to hate this holiday, but after many years of grumbling, I decided to make the day my own.  Now, it’s honestly my favorite holiday (and the only day of the year I get to wear my cupid cow earrings!).  Why? How? If you’re curious where the tradition started, you can read about it here on an older blog of mine.  If you enjoy the poems and want to read more, you can find them in the blog filters under “Valentine’s Day poems.”  This year I have 5 poems of others’ to share and 1 of my own. AND some really funny biology valentines I found on social media (and tracked down to their source).

I thought I had only just discovered Rosemary Mosco because of these very Valentines. But then I went “OH WAIT! I KNOW HER!” when I saw her kidlit books (i.e., Butterflies are Pretty Gross, There are No Ants in This Book, etc.). I had no idea she was the one and the same!  I will have to read a LOT more of her comics (I’ve already started to do just that on her website). At any rate, you can find these killer Valentines for Naturalists at her website HERE as well. You’ve got a new fan Rosemary!

Now on to the poems! I share one from Ogden Nash I honestly hadn’t seen before (HOW is that possible?), one by Pablo Neruda and another by Edna St. Vincent Millay that I hadn’t read before, one by D.H. Lawrence that captured me in its imagery, and a long-ish one by Lisel Mueller.  All had different lines, bits, and nuances that I loved.  And one by me that I revised for the occasion.  Enjoy!

To My Valentine by Ogden Nash

More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That’s how much I love you.

I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.

As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,
Or a juggler hates a shove,
As a hostess detests unexpected guests,
That’s how much you I love.

I love you more than a wasp can sting,
And more than the subway jerks,
I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,
And more than a hangnail irks.

I swear to you by the stars above,
And below, if such there be,
As the High Court loathes perjurious oaths,
That’s how you’re loved by me.

 

 

Alive Together by Lisel Mueller

Speaking of marvels, I am alive

together with you, when I might have been

alive with anyone under the sun,

when I might have been Abelard’s woman

or the whore of a Renaissance pope

or a peasant wife with not enough food

and not enough love, with my children

dead of the plague. I might have slept

in an alcove next to the man

with the golden nose, who poked it

into the business of stars,

or sewn a starry flag

for a general with wooden teeth.

I might have been the exemplary Pocahontas

or a woman without a name

weeping in Master’s bed

for my husband, exchanged for a mule,

my daughter, lost in a drunken bet.

I might have been stretched on a totem pole

to appease a vindictive god

or left, a useless girl-child,

to die on a cliff. I like to think

I might have been Mary Shelley

in love with a wrong-headed angel,

or Mary’s friend. I might have been you.

This poem is endless, the odds against us are endless,

our chances of being alive together

statistically nonexistent;

still we have made it, alive in a time

when rationalists in square hats

and hatless Jehovah’s Witnesses

agree it is almost over,

alive with our lively children

who-but for endless ifs-

might have missed out on being alive

together with marvels and follies

and longings and lies and wishes

and error and humor and mercy

and journeys and voices and faces

and colors and summers and mornings

and knowledge and tears and chance.

 

 

So That You Will Hear Me by Pablo Neruda

So that you will hear me
my words
sometimes grow thin
as the tracks of the gulls on the beaches.

Necklace, drunken bell
for your hands smooth as grapes.

And I watch my words from a long way off.
They are more yours than mine.
They climb on my old suffering like ivy.

It climbs the same way on damp walls.
You are to blame for this cruel sport.
They are fleeing from my dark lair.
You fill everything, you fill everything.

Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy,
and they are more used to my sadness than you are.

Now I want them to say what I want to say to you
to make you hear as I want you to hear me.

The wind of anguish still hauls on them as usual.
Sometimes hurricanes of dreams still knock them over.
You listen to other voices in my painful voice.

Lament of old mouths, blood of old supplications.
Love me, companion. Don’t forsake me. Follow me.
Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish.

But my words become stained with your love.
You occupy everything, you occupy everything.

I am making them into an endless necklace
for your white hands, smooth as grapes.

 

 

Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX) by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink

Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink

And rise and sink and rise and sink again;

Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;

Yet many a man is making friends with death

Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

It well may be that in a difficult hour,

Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,

Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,

I might be driven to sell your love for peace,

Or trade the memory of this night for food.

It well may be. I do not think I would.

 

 

Song (“Love has crept…”) By D.H. Lawrence

Love has crept into her sealed heart

As a field bee, black and amber,

Breaks from the winter-cell, to clamber

Up the warm grass where the sunbeams start.

 

Love has crept into her summery eyes,

And a glint of colored sunshine brings

Such as his along the folded wings

Of the bee before he flies.

 

But I with my ruffling, impatient breath

Have loosened the wings of the wild young sprite;

He has opened them out in a reeling flight,

And down her words he hasteneth.

 

Love flies delighted in her voice:

The hum of his glittering, drunken wings

Sets quivering with music the little things

That she says, and her simple words rejoice.

 

 

Late Love by Jena Benton

The shadows stretch long
over the hoary mountains
and the horizon shimmers
the rosy pink
of a beginning sunset.
I sigh
beside you.
At long last,
you are here
to enjoy this
with me.