Riding The "T" with Valentines

I love riding the "T." I will explain the arcana of the Boston subway system in a following post, let me just say now that I have great and interesting adventures "beneath the streets of boston;" but that day, that year... ok, I'll stop with the allusions, one day, between the original and the current Charlie (I said I'd explain later, this is going to turn serious presently) I was riding the Orange line, and writing in my journal. It was a big journal. I write large. (note the tense, no allusion there.)

A women came up to me and said "What interesting handwriting you have!"

I was working on a poem. Writing poetry evokes the young calligrapher I once was, and I tend to write my poems in a very interesting italic hand. It was those years of studying Arrighi at RISD, I guess. The scrawl in my journal had a three line cap. It was conspicuous to my neighbor on the seat, and so she made her comment.

I thanked her, but said there was a small problem with it, which was, and is, that it was totally illegible, even to myself! ( I've lost more good lines because of this...)

She was nonplussed! "But, it is so beautiful! It doesn't matter!" I think she may have been French.

This little reminiscence is timely as it was just before Valentines Day, two years after the passing of  "the Mad Genius" and I had been nursing my lonely hart with an infatuation with a fickle man who I actually like very much but know too well to have thought romantically about. Ah me......

Here is what was in the journal:

Saint Valentine

On this day I’m all alone

The object of my heart has flown

To distant southern climes

Leaving me with art and rhymes

To host the ghosts and the daemons

Which these days attend your season.

I have given honor, written sonnets

Offered love, no conditions on it

True in body heart and mind 

All things men claim they want to find

But can not see, or will not trade

For selfish hollow lives they’ve made

Full of words but lacking deeds

Bereft of trust and full of needs

How many of your days must I endure

‘Till love, or death perhaps, becomes secure.

In my introduction to this blog I promised poetry- what better time of year to start! I promise something more cheerful for the day itself!