For You, Friend

this Valentine's Day, I intend to stand
for as long as I can on a kitchen stool
and hold back the hands of the clock,
so that wherever you are, you may walk
even more lightly in your loveliness;

so that the weak, mid-February sun
(whose chill I will feel from the face
of the clock) cannot in any way
lessen the lights in your hair, and the wind
(whose subtle insistence I will feel

in the minute hand) cannot tighten
the corners of your smile. People
drearily walking the winter streets
will long remember this day:

how they glanced up to see you
there in a storefront window, glorious,
strolling along on the outside of time.

Ted Kooser