14 February 2024 (valentine's day)

Valentine’s Day

the cheerful red

of ice-fishing shacks

14 February 2019 (ducks)

Valentine’s Day

ducks on the river

pairing off

13 February 2019 (husband)

the love I feel

watching my husband

shovel the driveway

February 14: Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day. Nightfall.
Piercing the deep blue mist--
the planet Venus.

February 13: Day before Valentine's Day

Snow falls all day
but still the titmice
sing their love songs.

February 14: Valentine's Day

Composed as we were driving home from our Valentine's Day dinner out...

Reclining in her bed
on Valentine's Day--
crescent moon.

The menu from the restaurant where my husband and I dined tonight featured even better poetry to capture the essence of the evening, during which we dined on North Haven oysters, scallops carpaccio, and an omakase assortment for two. Sushi is such a sensual meal.

February 14: My Funny Valentine

Earlier on this holiday of love, I was thinking that my valentine of the day was hearing the titmice singing their courtship songs along the banks of the still-frozen river. What could be more romantic than birds singing songs of love? But this afternoon, as I was talking to a co-worker, a yellow lab appeared at the  glass door leading out to the porch. With no owner in sight, this cute little dog looked in expectantly, tail wagging, no doubt ready to lavish us with slobbery dog kisses if we'd open the door. We exclaimed how sweet our visitor was just as turned away and ran off up the hill, apparently heeding the call of its (still invisible) owner.

My husband has to put up with my watching the Westminster Dog Show every year. Tonight is the final judging. He quickly gets disgusted with such a blatant display of genetic manipulation and inbreeding. I just enjoy marveling at all the different breeds of dogs humans have produced--all those shapes, sizes, and colors for so many different reasons. There are dogs for every purpose: the Norwegian lundehund, for example, has six toes so that it can climb cliffs and hunt puffins; the toys are bred to be companion dogs; it's in the border collie's genes to herd, as my sister who owns one can attest; the bloodhound is a scent hound that can track its quarry's dried blood. There are 13" beagles and 15" beagles, and three different varieties of dachshund. There are elkhounds, deerhounds, and coonhounds; dogs that point, dogs that retrieve. The Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever apparently creates a ruckus in the water to attract curious geese and ducks. The Pekingese, once only owned by Chinese royalty, doesn't even look like a dog as it toddles around the show floor. Truly, without even entering the realm of mutts, there's a dog for everyone... if you want one. I like to think that its like that with humans, too.

Little dog visits
just to see us, devoted
for those brief seconds.

February 14: Love Is in the Air

Today you might well ask, Who is St. Valentine and why has "his" day become a romantic holiday? Valentine's Day, drily described by Wikipedia as: "traditionally a day on which lovers express their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards," doesn't really seem like a holiday that would receive traditional Christian support. No one seems really sure exactly who Valentine was beyond his being a Roman Christian who may or may not have performed what were then illegal Christian marriages. There's the tenuous connection, I guess. Apparently Geoffrey Chaucer was the first one to reference St. Valentine's Day in English in his poem Parlement of Foules, which I mentioned yesterday. An excellent prose translation of this poem by Gerald NeCastro of the University of Maine footnotes this fact. So perhaps we have Chaucer to thank for the romantic tradition, which later bloomed more fully with the exchange of greeting cards in the Victorian era and has now become an excuse for couples to go out to dinner and buy each other sweets and florid cards with messages made up by a bunch of people in cubicles in Kansas City. (For sweets, I highly recommend Maine-made chocolates by Black Dinah Chocolatiers.)


In his poem, Chaucer defined Valentine's Day as the day when birds choose their mates. The poem itself is an entertaining discourse on love, in which the narrator falls asleep and is taken in a dream to the halls of Venus, where all the birds are gathered around waiting to pair up. You can imagine the noise level and sexual tension. The day's proceedings get off to a bad start when three eagles get into an argument over who gets to choose the comely female eagle perched on Venus's arm. The day drags on as other birds, anxious to find their mates, debate in parliamentary fashion how this decision should be made. The goose thinks the female should only go with a mate she really loves; the dove believes in being true to his mate until he dies, etc. Finally the female eagle asks if she can wait till next year to decide. All that debating apparently gave her a headache. I'm not sure if I would recommend this as a romantic poem to share with your lover today (Pablo Neruda and e.e. cummings, for example, have better love offerings), but it's a fun read--keeping in mind that I was an English major and "fun" might be a relative term.


Chaucer or not, just looking out my window I see signs that love is in the air. Squirrels spiral after each other around trunks, bushy tails waving enticements. The insistent "peter, peter" song of the titmice rings out through the trees. The male downy woodpecker knocks on the old birch tree, an early territorial announcement. And owl courtship season is fully underway--friends report that they've been hearing great horned owls this week in the woods around their house, and others have been seeing barred owls on the move. That restlessness that leads us slowly and agonizingly into spring has begun to stir in the woods as surely as the still-chilly breeze. Brace yourselves, everyone. This isn't an easy season.


Husband who chose me,
may our bond be as solid
as that of ravens.