A dust of snow this Valentine’s Day
not much just a sprinkle of sugar
on roofs and grass of sweetmeats
the street’s clear to come and go
social love miserly virtual treats
turns sour at the corner ignored
relics of one’s love in framed pics.
Lost love seems now the sweetest
tooth in the mouth of memory when
to bite yearningly brings back pain
without which tho there is nothing
for the heart in its card to hark back
to not words nor images nor nights
at sea dressed in red sky vapor trails.
Words last not last night’s telling
as we amble toward a late spring
watching the squirrels and crows
from icy windows and Scamble and
Cramble the cats come to smell
and scratch in the familiar places
looking for a facial comfort zone.
But in safe and ease we may feel
nothing better to go in the cold
grab a nip and feel the wet bit
scrunch of the lips in the dark
alley tongue out the back door
of your ground floor apartment
upstairs we would not gambol.
Love’s crisis longs for a headline
an ocean in which to clown one’s
cartoon visions under a laughing
audience of unidentified balloons
aloft the shape and size of hearts
made of flour and sugar and red
paint and salt water taffy.
Oh to have & hold a heart a late
night very red strawberry fruit
hugs with no words drawings
seen from our wintry limbs
high up in our trees we climb
to enjoy one another’s going
easy and around and around.
The Coming of the Toads 