Windchime

What could be more appropriate on Valentine's Day than to share poetry -- especially an excellent love poem? And poetry does not often get much better than this poem, WINDCHIME, by Tony Hoagland, which speaks of love, yes, but from an unusual perspective.

btw, one tip to employ when reading poetry: read to the punctuation marks, and not to the end of lines. A trick that Hoagland uses especially well, and to excellent effect. Note the words he uses to end several lines (but not sentences!) of stanza #2 (hand, nail, teeth), which he mimics in stanza #4 (chest, forehead, mouth). And the indelible image of the mouth with the nail in it (sticking out of it!) that yet remains (eminently) kissable. All very clever, indeed. Ahh, love.

For you, SA.

Full Disclosure: Long love. And loving every moment of it.
-- David M Gordon / The Deipnosophist
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WINDCHIME

She goes out to hang the windchime

in her nightie and her work boots.

It's six-thirty in the morning

and she's standing on the plastic ice chest

tiptoe to reach the crossbeam of the porch,

windchime in her left hand,

hammer in her right, the nail

gripped tight between her teeth

but nothing happens next because

she's trying to figure out

how to switch #1 with #3.

She must have been standing in the kitchen,

coffee in her hand, asleep,

when she heard it—the wind blowing

through the sound the windchime wasn't making

because it wasn't there.

No one, including me, especially anymore believes

till death do us part,

but I can see what I would miss in leaving

the way her ankles go into the work boots

as she stands on the ice chest;

the problem scrunched into her forehead;

the little kissable mouth

with the nail in it.

-- Tony Hoagland