No Card Says it Better

From time to time I go back and read some of the poems that I have written. I find that there is often a certain "sameness" to them, the meter, the rhyme, the words. I have often tried experimenting with different styles but they always seem to fail in one way or another. This poem is an attempt at writing in my style but totally without rhyme. It was written for Analia's Valentine.

Gale L. Wolfenbarger
2 October 1994

 

No Card Says It Better

I walked in the store and I knew right away
What a foolish errand it was.
I try every year to capture my love
In words on beautiful card.

A card with a picture that touches the soul
And makes the heart want to sing.
With words that convey
How I feel inside and what her love means to me.

I lift every card and read what it says,
"Not this one, oh no, not for her"
One after another, each one in its turn,
Examined and slowly returned.

I struggle with feelings that I cannot express
Not with words or beautiful cards.
So I pick up a pen and write down what I feel
With words that come from within.

Words that I never have spoken to her
And why, I'm not really sure.
Why is it we keep locked carefully inside
What our heart is longing to speak.

Why is it the songs that ring through our soul
Never can find a voice?
And pictures we play every day in our mind
Are carefully hidden away?

Some things are so precious and not for display
That we hide them where no one can see.
And still every year I thumb through the cards,
Looking... Looking... Failing....

No words say it better or sound quite as sweet
As those we most often say,
"Sweetheart, I love you and I'm glad you are mine
For this day and always."

Gale L. Wolfenbarger
14 February 1994