A Valentine’s Day To-Do List
Editor’s note: Here, in poetic form, is the author’s advice to Valentine’s Day celebrants wondering how best to observe the holiday.
All you need do is give your heart
to the most deserving —
the lost child, the woman in search of herself,
or the one always there for you, patiently
enduring your misdeeds in hope of reformation,
a stalwart guide to life who means what she says
when she says “We have to talk” or teases you with
“Talk to me now or explain it to your parole officer.”
Remember that nothing lasts forever
and sometimes not even until the end of February.
The flowers wilt, the chocolates melt.
The curtain descends, everything ends
too soon, as the old song says, too soon
unless you can make a day like this
or a love that comes but once a year
last a little longer, or just long enough.
Howard Lachtman is the author of crime and detective stories, film noir studies, and a history of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s visits to America. In his Delta Detective series, written for Soundings Magazine since 2018, Lachtman introduced a private detective based in the Delta whose wide-ranging investigations offer a diversity of clients and a casebook of crimes, These have recently been augmented by a short-short story series of miniature mysteries designed for readers on the go who lack time but not interest in playing the game of armchair detective.
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