I bought for you a valentine—
an antique one, it seems.
Two birds on a Clematis vine;
first mailed on the fourteenth

of nineteen hundred ten that year,
a Wednesday morning, too.
She held it as a souvenir.
I picture her like you,

who always keeps the smallest things
and likes to have them near.
The sentimental thoughts they bring
sustaining through the years.

He didn’t write a...