Valentine's Day Poems

The Rules

"They do not know that if you use the word "dear" in one verse, then you cannot use the word "venison" for at least another two verses."

Saikaku Ihara, Some Final Words of Advice, p. 131

So, my dear one, heart's dearest;
I am limited. There are rules,
ancient and binding.

For this Valentine message,
this benison, I must tread warily
as a doe in November.

I may mention deer, though.
Or harts; hart to my deer you are,
leaping and returning.

The hart, caught unaware,
becomes fresh venison. (That's allowed,
in this fourth stanza.) I, transfixed

by Cupid's dart, am bound to love.
(Which binding sets me free.) A final word;
I'm yours, and you're my Valentine.

©Susannah Anderson, 2003
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Awareness

I love you with my shoulders,
my thighs, my ribs.
My hands love you.
But never touch --
Off limits! The boundaries
must be preserved,
the space between, a net,
a living web
where glances, trapped, vibrate like flies
that buzz and die and shrivel.

I love you with my ear
bound to the phone,
your voice a pulse spun far in space,
rebounding through the spiral where I hang
aquiver in a beaded web,
the work of some vast spider
wrapping my heart.

©Susannah Anderson, 2001
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LOGIC, STEP ONE:
DEFINITION OF TERMS

Let x be x. Let y be y.
y = f(x) As x goes, so does y.
If you are x, then I am y. As you go, so do I.

Let you be the sun; I am the moon.
If you are the wind, I'll be the waves.
As you go, so do I.

y = f(x) If there is bread, then there is butter.
Pen, then paper. Here, but not there. Here
and here: f = 1. Where you are, so am I.

But:
I am not moon, nor waves, nor butter. I am not paper.
I am me, just me. Only me. I = y.

So:
If I am me, then you must be
my Valentine.

©Susannah Anderson, 2006
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