Happy Heart Day

A couple of lovey poems in case you forgot the day.

Love Pirates

by Joseph Millar

I follow with my mouth the small wing of muscle

under your shoulder, lean over your back, breathing

into your hair and thinking of nothing. I want

to lie down with you under the sails of a wooden sloop

and drift away from all of it, our two cars rusting

in the parking lot, our families whining like tame geese

at feeding time, and all the bosses of the earth

cursing the traffic in the morning haze.

They will telephone each other from their sofas

and glass desks, with no idea where we could be,

unable to picture the dark throat

of the saxophone playing upriver, or the fire

we gather between us on this fantail of dusty light,

having stolen a truckload of roses

and thrown them into the sea.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Failing and Flying

by Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

It's the same when love comes to an end,

or the marriage fails and people say

they knew it was a mistake, that everybody

said it would never work. That she was

old enough to know better. But anything

worth doing is worth doing badly.

Like being there by that summer ocean

on the other side of the island while

love was fading out of her, the stars

burning so extravagantly those nights that

anyone could tell you they would never last.

Every morning she was asleep in my bed

like a visitation, the gentleness in her

like antelope standing in the dawn mist.

Each afternoon I watched her coming back

through the hot stony field after swimming,

the sea light behind her and the huge sky

on the other side of that. Listened to her

while we ate lunch. How can they say

the marriage failed? Like the people who

came back from Provence (when it was Provence)

and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.

I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,

but just coming to the end of his triumph.