Lillian here, delighted to be tending bar on St. Valentine’s Day!

A few interesting facts from Wikipedia:
* The Feast of St. Valentine’s Day originated as a Western Christian liturgical feast day.
* The custom of sending cards, flowers, chocolates and other gifts originated in the UK.
* The earliest surviving valentine in English appears in the Paston Letters, written in 1477, by Margery Brewes to her future husband John: “my right well-beloved Valentine.”
* Valentine’s Day is mentioned by Ophelia in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1600 – 1601).

And, of course, the image of the heart is prominent in valentines today.

When I think of the word “heart” I‘m reminded of a favorite segment on the old Mitch Miller tv show where they sang one of my father’s favorite songs: Heart of My Heart.

I still have an old poetry book of my mother’s in which she kept scraps of paper — all little poems with her handwritten notes and the date on them, sent to my dad when he was in the service for WW II. There’s also little poems sent to her by her best friend Franny. Those were the days when love letters were written in script and carried by the postal service….rather than tweeted, emailed or sent by FB message.

So, today I’m asking you to Have a Heart. 

Include the word “heart” somewhere in your poem. Perhaps some will be clever and we’ll have to search for it: the art is divine; she art thine; hear thy self. Or you might talk about a brave heart, broken heart, your sweetheart, or be heartfelt in your feelings. So many ways to have a heart!

As always, please do observe the “rules of conduct” for dVerse – and for those of you new to dVerse, here’s what we hope everyone does:

• Write a poem that includes the word “heart” as the prompt suggests, and post it to your blog.
• Click on Mr. Linky below to add your name and enter the direct URL to your poem.
• On your blog, please provide a link back to dVerse: perhaps a statement at the end of the post referring to this prompt and linking to dVerse.
• Please also use dVerse as a Tag. This enables more folks to view our prompts and thus increases the readers of your poem as well!