.
My Pensive Valentine
Devout Love is not in the offered sweet,
nor does Love proclaim in the proffered rose,
nor the cliché tucked tight in a bouquet
bought sight unseen, not in any of those
mundane nudges and gestures, of one day,
of one month, of each year, does Love engage.
Love’s witness cannot be bought on a street
corner, for coins carry no currency,
no news of who and what and why and how
you are, I am, or this Love came to be.
Truly, Love abides in what we avow
in our loving acts from youth through old age:
passion without recompense, without doubt,
that threads through our hearts thoroughly throughout.
.
.
Jonathan Kinsman’s book length poem, ‘Canso of California,’ won the 2006 James Irvine Award for the “Best Narrative Poem about California.” He was the first Laureate to serve two counties simultaneously from 2012-2020. His commentary and poems appeared recently (Jan 2024) in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics. He toils in the vineyards of the Lord, aka, 8th grade public school English classes in northern Sacramento Valley.
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Jonathan, I was intrigued by “passion without recompense.” Love is like that. It is giving both freely without expecting reciprocation yet hoping for a passionate response that may never be available or attainable. Sometimes we can be assuaged only by our avowals and acts. This is a good reminder for Valentine’s Day.
Roy, you are, as usual, spot on in your close readings! Thank you for acknowledging the couplet, I spent some time on finding the word that would fit the meaning and the measure, with the right amount of seasoning as in “an equivalent for anything given.” Our loving acts should, by definition, be without expectation of return, yet we still smart if no one notices. We are sonnets in rewrite, tropes in review. Hah!
Exquisite Jonathan! Very Profound! A Lovely Poem that is an Ode to Love.
Thank you, Liz! Whether we weather the day or not, Love is in the air, is it not??
This poem has a very ‘Shakespeare’ feel to it. Top notch, Jonathan.
Thank you, Paul. I believe Tradition is the Individual Talent and the more we work under the great Lights of our collective past, we
better we see our way through dark days of “anything goes.” You are discern
ing in your craft, too. And to quote one of my favorite lines of yours, the Poets of the Tradition, as the unknown Masons of the Great Middle Ages, have “exorcised the darkened ages’ ghost.”
A magnificent couplet, Jonathan, completing a sonnet where the rhymes drop in unexpectedly, but then turn out to be all present and accounted for as the poem concludes. Suits the pensive topic of where to look for Love of unknown origin that manifests itself mysteriously.
Thank you for the compliment, Margaret. I try in my poems to present the Idea on a foundation layered in tradition and shared culture. And being intended to be read out loud, I try to entertain with the SCP’s 3 Rs masthead motto: rhyming, rhythmic and rapturous. Your phrase “manifests itself” is spot on: Love will either “open to view or comprehension” (the onus is on us to notice) or be “plainly apprehensible or evident.”
You found the pulse of the sonnet, thank you again,
Thanks, Jonathan. The common attempts to prove love, by subtraction, are not the treasure. The feeling given and received is much greater without saying. Ennui or joy, you lead us there. Simple and pure, your words do guide.
Your reaction is astute and gracious. Thank you, Terence, for the kind words!