Valley Voices

With Richard Aston I share a love for science and logic, a love for poetry, and a love for the Susquehanna Valley.  His home is Wilkes-Barre and mine was (for 25 years) Bloomsburg -- both Northeastern Pennsylvania Susquehanna River towns.  We met long ago at a gathering of the Mulberry Poets (a group in which Richard remains active) in Scranton.  His recent collection of poetry Valley Voices (Foothills Publishing, 2012) has recently arrived in my mailbox and I'd like to share one of the voices in his collection -- a gathering of poems from a writer who has listened to the members of the communities in which he lives and has created memory portraits so that they will not be forgotten.  Here is one of his Susquehanna valley voices. 

Be My Valentine

Unlike many newspapers, the British Guardian publishes poems -- and, on February 10, 2012, they offered a selection to celebrate the upcoming Valentine's day. Included, among work by more than a dozen notables, are poems by Wislawa Szymborska, John Donne, Derek Walcott (whose poem "Love After Love" is one of my favorites), Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Byron, and Carol Ann Duffy -- and a poem by John Fuller that is seasoned with some mathematical terminology. You will need to visit the Guardian article online for the whole of Fuller 's poem, "Valentine," but here are several snippets to whet your interest. (Enjoy the fun of rhyming mathematics with attics!)