Valentine’s Day 2013

by Tasha Halpert

Copyright 2013 Chris Lorenz

A Valentine to all that I have loved

and love at present and will one day love

my dear ones, you know who you are and will

be always in my heart of hearts to hold.

My cherished friends and family you are

the center of my life, my heart of hearts.

Besides these precious treasured loves I hold

a multitude of others dear to me

well loved, yet perished in the fires of time

and others vanished from my sight yet not

at all forgotten and will never be.

Dear faces in the album of my past.

Then too there are those pearls of memory

strung on a string that dangles from my heart,

star spangled nights and gracious sunny days

filled with great joys and poignant happiness

that I remember only as a thread

woven into my tapestry of time.

These too I love: The taste of lemonade,

that curls the tongue and slakes the eager throat

parched for its twisted sugar-sour thrust,

the feel of slippers, plush on tired feet,

the softness of my pillow when at dawn

I curl myself around a morning dream.

These too I love, the poets of my youth

singing their tales of love and victory

the vivid rounds of sounds that boom again

fog horns of memory drilling the mists of time

to guide me back to other selves I was

that I may know the joy of those days now.

Loves I have many, more than I can count:

Beethoven symphonies, Chopin etudes

glimpses of Renoir, and Rembrandt too,

there are too many here to name but few

I cannot pick among my loves to choose.

I can but feel them as they fill my heart.

Encircled by my loves I feel them all.

I am a fountain gushing as I flow,

my love is borne upon its gentle waves.

My song sings through each note that weaves me whole

into my self that is all selves and more–

the I that is the All that is All Love.