A flat grey day spitting pellets
    of dry snow. The news tells me
        our elected representatives

are debating how many young
    soldiers to sacrifice, personally,
        to politics; and that we have

perhaps a decade to decide
    between economic prosperity
        and survival. Here in Montana

February can’t decide to be
    spring, or winter. Snow where
        there should be sun; sun where

there should be snow. I went
    to the doctor today. I use the local
        women’s clinic because the personal

is political. They buzzed me through
    the barred gate into this medical fortress
        built on the bombed-out ashes

of the last one. I was weighed
    and measured; prodded and listened to
        (the political is personal); cautioned

against my three-cigarette-a-day habit;
    then passed to a young nurse for
        the bloodletting. After three slow

and painful tries, he sent me home.
    My friend went to the dentist today.
        They shot her full of Novocaine, again

and again, until her lips were so numb
    she could not speak, but still she felt
        the pain. They sent her home.

I could have told them: there are not
    enough drugs in the world for this pain,
        and you can’t get blood from a stone.

 

 

Sorry, not exactly a Valentine poem — but then, there are all kinds of love poems…