Valentine's Day

I realized it's Valentine's day..........I figured I should try to dig up something that relates to the occasion.  I found these poems, alas, the residue of a long ago love affair..........  

BIRD OF PARADISE


I pause at the door, key in hand.
Breathing in the last of you.
Pleasure that pierces heart and reason

All I can give
is to give it back.
World, here is my heart's unspoken delight.
I offer it back to you
to light among the dappled leaves

I open my hand
a scarlet bird
flashes among the trees.


Fly free,
Bird of Paradise,
into the morning
from the other side of forever.

IN CONSTANT FLIGHT

The road twists before me
a white line, a black stream

Hello and Goodbye live in the same house
I examine myself, knowing
that a woman of 40 years
is old enough to expect nothing.

On a whim, I stop for coffee
in Scotland, Pa.
Population 2,500 souls
and write in my journal:

    "Kiss the joy as it flies
     and live in eternity's sunrise"

Thank you, William Blake.
I am driving west now
where the sun before me
continues to set.

A painting I once saw comes to mind
two hands lying, side by side,
not touching
a kind of moving electricity
holding them
together,
and apart

from somewhere in the area of my chest
a secret electricity expands behind me
like a ribbon in the wind,
a silver cord
crossing the Pokanos,
the Catskills,
mountains, oceans, lifetimes.

Pull the cord,
and I shall surely know it.