Today’s the second month and fourteenth day
of yet another year. When paper hearts
are cut from folded pink and Love portrayed
as a cartoon infant, blind and armed with darts
to skewer Spring’s first sons. Meanwhile pitchmen
ply their wares: the ‘forever’ diamond ring
the lingerie to make love young again,
and cut flowers already withering.
How much for all the baubles bought and sold?
For all the trinket-words and token-vows
whether breathed in air or stamped in gold?
The body’s love is in the broken boughs,
in spilled blood-sap and fallen fruit and seed;
it is our veins, not paper hearts, that bleed.