Happy Valentine's Day

Yay, erotic love. I get it, you know? But. The Greeks had three words denoting "love" for a reason: it's a complex (of) passion(s); to have one word for it makes it deceptively easy to talk about or, for that matter, to declare dead . . . when maybe, just maybe, it's still performing its work between the two parties; below the ashes, an ember.

In that spirit, I wanted to link to and pass on a couple of things that speak to love's less-obvious manifestations.

Over at In Medias Res, fellow Wichitan Russell Arben Fox, also in a cribbing mood, re-posts something from Rob Dreher and speaks eloquently for himself of the pleasures of the ordinary in marriage.

And finally, this poem by Tony Hoagland, via this morning's Writer's Almanac:

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.