Brace Yourself

Yup, yup, V-day is nearly upon us!

I actually beat no ill will toward this (Bonnie-style air quotes) "holiday." I feel much the same about it that I feel towards birthdays and Halloween: it's great fun when you're a kid and can go to sugar-filled parties, but when you're an adult, it gets rather unnecessarily expensive.

I am also slightly alarmed that we have chosen to commemorate a man's brutal murder by eating candies made of chalk. But to each his own!

In that spirit, I present to you my Saint Valentine's Day haiku:

Required amore
Overpriced restaurant food
Roses bloom in June!

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Woods in Winter

Woods in Winter
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


When winter winds are piercing chill,
And through the hawthorn blows the gale,
With solemn feet I tread the hill,
That overbrows the lonely vale.

O'er the bare upland, and away
Through the long reach of desert woods,
The embracing sunbeams chastely play,
And gladden these deep solitudes.

Were, twisted round the barren oak,
The summer vine in beauty clung,
And summer winds the stillness broke,
The crystal icicle is hung.

Where, from their frozen urns, mute springs
Pour out the river's gradual tide,
Shrilly the skater's iron rings,
And voices fill the woodland side.

Alas! how changed from the fair scene,
When birds sang out their mellow lay,
And winds were soft, and woods were green
And the song ceased not with the day.

But still wild music is abroad,
Pale, desert woods! within your crowd;
And gathering winds, in hoarse accord,
Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.

Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear
Has grown familiar with your song;
I hear it in the opening year, -
I listen, and it cheers me long.

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A Winter Walk

We sleep, and at length awake to the still reality of a winter morning.

The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact.

Every decayed stump and moss-grown stone and rail, and the dead leaves of autumn, are concealed by a clean napkin of snow.

In the bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives.

In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold.

~Henry Thoreau
from "A Winter Walk"

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A Spanish Affair

A Spanish Affair

Years from now
I will stare into
Someone else's face,
Some other arm will
Wrap around my shoulders,
Some different voice will
Wish me pleasant dreams.

But out of the shadow of memory
Will come the soft glow
Of a park lamp
And the hint of a breeze
From a cool Spanish night
In an autumn long past.

Years from now
On some distant October day,
The first taste of fall
Will wash over me
And I will smile and remember
The night that
Charlie kissed me.

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