An early valentine

"Over here is word, over there is thing, at which the word is shooting amiable love-arrows." (Lyn Hejinian)

I like the idea of amiable love arrows. It's kind of an oxymoron but kind of not. Word knows thing is never going to say yes, that they're never going to get together, but it's going to keep asking anyway. But it's not going to be a creepy stalker about it. It's going to have the kind of unrequited love that turns into a general love for the world, the kind that people around can feel and be a little sustained by. For everyone else, this unrequited love is sustaining partly because it's not directed at us--in a way, because of its impersonality. And this is what poetry is. It's a neat idea.