They Know Valentine

A  cargo of middle-aged mothers

And a sleepy old man in the front seat

Traveling with the destinies

Of their children in their hearts

From a meeting of schools and teachers

Reminiscing when they were girls

Running to catch the phone

Gabbing with girlfriends for hours 

Laughing about the tricks they played

Each with a saga to tell

In the struggle to grow up

And the comfort of being friends 

They know how much the world depends

On childhood and a child

The wonder in their faces

Their warm embraces and first words

Maybe Valentine

Condensing down as we all have been

From star to star over millennia

Will these bodies not become stones 

To one another in the end

Mountains to be clambered over

Will we block our way

Moving forward as a whole

Or they say not at all

But we are all still children

Holding on to our mother's hand

Who doesn't see the car coming 

Or maybe the light of the stars

We once were is just arriving

So we can quickly get across

Hurried by angels as in the pictures

People of the Heart Valentine (for Lee)

To me it all says

Be! Be!

But who made being

Forms transform 

Only the road stays road

And the task of finding

A few companions to walk with

Even if only for short distances

And a fleeting conversation

Thank God time is a fiction

His emissaries impose on us

From which we can now and then

Escape into that eternal moment

That still comes and goes

In us and between us

Afterwards Valentine

It was still spring

When he returned 

Exuberant spring

Overwhelming him

For days he sat in wonderment

Getting as far as a stump

In the yard to watch

A raft of stars descend

As if to carry him away

Until he had achieved

A stillness next to death

Just to feel again and again

Its overcoming the passing through

Apparent in every leaf and stem

The Seventh Day Valentine

There's something so child-like

About this curious old man

Still willing to follow birds

To find his own way

Sneaking around the castle's

Dark halls and locked doors

Into all the forbidden places

This holder of secrets now 

Who must be imprisoned

At the gates of heaven 

How he loved the music

The dancing and the sailing

This tired little boy

Who just wants to go home

The Sixth Day Valentine

An egg becomes a bird

Bursting forth cooked and burnt

Whose ashes deposit two

Tiny figures that fed on blood

Start to grow into king and queen

It all goes back to memory

The first magic show

A house of mirrors where

The sun burns out the sun 

The sadness of metaphors

That we can only approximate 

What's really going on in us

We sleep on mysteries 

Until the calling of the dawn

The Fifth Day Valentine

The first formulations of the idea

Of a physical-magical cosmos

Love took for its thesis

It would share its existence

Out to the smallest things

In a continuing evanescence

It would walk the world 

Storing its misgivings

In beautiful all bodies

And fall asleep in the earth

Dying into its creations

Over and over again

Giving birth to a child

While remaining a virgin

The Fourth Day Valentine

Here we enter another world

Half-sensual half-sublime

Christ pulls back his veil

Revealing still more lives

Seven little ships carrying coffins 

Sail out on a dark lake

A transformation underway

After which one hopes

Nothing will be the same

Some power still lingers

Don't you feel it in the pictures

He has painted and left behind

Real water in this fountain

Poured from a living mind

The Third Day Valentine

 Before there can be a wedding

There must be a weighing of our love 

How much of it is self-desire

And how much the real fire

How much a feather can tip the scales 

To prove the phony and the liar

The stupid who play the gods for fools

And find yourself among them

Before there can be a wedding

There must be romance the unraveling 

Of unsolvable riddles

In someone else's face 

A cup must be passed

The taste of tears and laughter

The Second Day Valentine

Happy the day that brings the sun

And moon together in the same sky

Dangling from a distant star

And happy the man loudly singing 

Through the woods of another spring

Keeping to the path sometimes disappearing

Pursuing a raven and a dove

Questioned does he qualify

At several stops along the way

And only at the last second

Swept through the slamming door

Of the castle of his dreams

Only to be shackled as before

Content to be left to sleep

Below in a drafty hall

Having found a friend

The First Day Valentine

He doesn't say how many in the end

Were drawn up from that dark pit

But he was the first

To thank his rescuers 

Bloodied head and feet

Having survived the nightmare

He remembers the angel

Almost shattering him this morning

The invitation stirring in his pocket 

An old man stumbling on his way

Knowing exactly where he's going

With no idea how to get there

And we left in this dark pit

Remember him and trust 

He will remember us

Wind's Valentine

The wind is up today

Air impelled by angels

Giving themselves away

Showing us how it's done

Warmly and yet with little

Flecks of ice that sting the face 

Hurrying us on in the sun

So it almost seems to carry us

A step or two and lift

Our feet up off the ground

Fearlessly and joyfully

Prodding us along

Wind that is the will

Weaving us our fate

Neither too early 

Nor it seems too late

Getting Through Valentine

 Coming to the great wall

At the limits of my knowing

I walked and walked and walked

Until I found a little crack

And took to hammering every day

A hole I could crawl through

That finally brought me to

The endless fields of feeling

The phantom of the visible world

Once passed there's no return

Leading to another massive wall

I knew to be my impenetrable will

With its tall turrets and flapping flags

And me banging on its only door

Coming Valentine

A straight line divides my yard

Half in shadow half in sun

But the light is slowly pushing back

The darkness against the wall

So I can see each blade of grass

And all kinds of budding weeds 

Step over that threshold into the light

Until the whole space is taken in

Almost every shadow erased

And for a few moments

I too can stand in the sun

Illuminated and overcome

As if some flowering could come

Some leaves sprout along my limbs