Love Day: Give it a Moment
An old man leans on a cane, eyes
squinting at the rows; a guy in saggy-bottom
Carhartts mumbles, “slim pickins.”
A woman holds a pale pink
orchid and says to two shuffling
teen boys, “You pick it out.
She’s your mother.”
A skinny woman with worried
eyes looks past me to the jumbled
racks of red and pink, and honest
to God, I stand,
tears welling. Every earnest
heart, though wounded,
is reaching out to another.
Say what you will
about it being contrived
or silly, but Oh, I say,
soften that hard heart, for you too
once knew love. Maybe you still do,
and so let this Love Day
be okay because it persists still
in the thin and rocky soil of our
times.
Give it a moment.
And to the man of my dreams, John Comeau, I say, “Sweetheart, every day with you is Valentines.”
