A VALENTINE'S POOCH SMOOCH

BUD + TIGGY

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SAINT VALENTINE

                    Who was this Valentine whom we today
                    Will celebrate with posies and with sweets?
                    Earned he sainthood the hard or easy way?
                    I’ll do a Wiki check on all his feats . . .

                   That’s done, and I am sad now to report
                   He was a martyr of the cruelest kind,
                   Whose death was nasty, brutish, but not short,
                   From punishments maliciously designed.

                  How he became the patron of romance
                  Bedecked in February’s hothouse flowers
                  Is surely not apparent at first glance:
                  No smiling visage; rather one that lours.

                       Let’s choose some other saint, some other day
                       And be it in the merry month of May.

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DUCK WAVES

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THE NOSE KNOWS

                    This little creature snuggled by my side
                    As I sit in my armchair set to write,
                    Seems, if I asked, that she might well confide
                    Some secrets only she could bring to light.

                    I wonder what this pup would have to say
                    So I might get the dog’s-eye view of things,
                    Although it’s more her nose that shows the way
                    With the olfactory pleasures that it brings.

                    There is more sense in scent for her than me,
                    A fourth dimension of experience
                    Since I lack her refined acuity,
                    Yet I observe those pleasures are intense.

                        To read and write is much of my delight;
                        Her smelling’s, though, a keener kind of sight.

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PHC

                    The Prairie Home Companion’s changing hands,
                    Chris Thile standing in for Garrison,
                    Much to the consternation of old fans
                    Who see in him there’s no comparison.

                   Though Thile is a whiz on mandolin
                   And sings his tenor part with vim and vigor,
                   To Keillor’s baritone it sounds quite thin,
                   And Garrison in other ways is bigger.

                   Keillor is a presence who will haunt
                   This show that he has honed for forty years,
                   A hefty specter who makes Chris seem gaunt
                   By geniality that wins, endears.

                       No, Garrison, though you have earned a break,
                       To leave forever were a sad mistake.

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WATER SKY

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GOOD GARDENING

                    Since we’ve arrived, then others have as well:
                    It cannot be, in all this universe,
                   Though it’s too soon yet for our search to tell,
                   The Cosmos did not other life disburse.

                   We’ve long imagined so in fantasies
                   That myth and science fiction have devised,
                   But yet the distance between galaxies
                   Forbids discovering what we’ve surmised.

                  Our enterprises should be focused on
                  Not searching space and things celestial,
                  What we may merely speculate upon,
                  But on what’s palpable, terrestrial:

                      We need to do what lets this planet thrive,
                      A model world, should visitors arrive.

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