What Will You Become Valentine

If birds evolved from dinosaurs

What will birds evolve to be

Over the coming centuries

What can we find if we unpack

The mystery of their ancestry

That might provide a clue

To their future transformations

The divine tinkering involved

The most precise adjustments

Of matter by imaginations

Working in darkness and light 

Sometimes the moon returns us

To that unearthly night

When the first birds sang

When the last dinosaur was dead

Except Valentine

In the six years dear one

Since your new birthday

Alive again in spirit land

Can you tell me so far

What you've learned

What as a child there

You've had to undergo

Slowly separating yourself out 

From everything around you

Down to your essential self

An idea among ideas

Wandering in vast expanses

Searching prior lives you see

It's all a mystery to me

Except when I feel you near

Out There Valentine

On the other side of the zodiac

I turned and looked back

Everything outside me flipped

So it was all inside me now

It's true I was the cosmos

While sitting on my porch

Just as Ptolemy suggested

From out there we're all stars

And the earth the youngest 

So it knows the least of who

It must grow up to be

I could see that when I

Stood back from the painting

In the mirror at the back of the room

The little hazy face of memory

Planting Season Valentine

Are there not songs in the seeds

I pour into the bird-feeder

Old songs and new songs

Waiting to be sung

The ring-necked doves are mating

On the roof above the sea

Of humming traffic while

The finches sing along

The nutriment of song

The welling up of it

From the body of the earth

To be consumed by little beaks

Who carry on the ancient sounds

I try to keep the feeder full

The lazy farmer of such songs

Two Words Valentine

At the bar when the liquor

Of philosophy was on him 

And partly because he wanted to stifle

The man beside him who wouldn't

Stop talking he turned to him

And asked what two words were the most

Important in life and to shut up

Until he could come up with them

No one moved but the jukebox

Kept playing some pitiful song

And no one took a drink

So he turned to the old man

On his left and asked the same

And calmly he said 'just think'

Entered Valentine

I don't believe that hummingbird

Was acting on its own 

An abruptness that was planned

With the precision of a star

When it entered our door

Hovering above our heads

Its rainbow flame

I felt it was asking

For some closer connection

Some clearer understanding

Of flight and stasis

Who themselves are still gods

Wonder was all that sustained us

We could hear its thrumming heart

She Says Valentine

As adjective to noun

The moon to sun

Or comma hurrying on

To that glowing dot

Which happens to be

Venus holding her breath

Gathering her thoughts

Love brings an end she says

To everything not love 

However long it takes

Not heaven or earth escape

My warm embrace 

I am all you love

And keep it safe

Hilltop Valentine

We could not see

But felt it lifting

The sun we knew

Was fulsome there

Behind occluding clouds

He was rising again

We could not touch him

But dumbly stand

At the top of the hill

Watching people climbing up

The winding path to us 

The wind had an icy bite to it

Streaming through the silent crowd

Until a woman started to sing

And one by one we let our breath

Join the angels joyful there

 

Where Valentine

At the outer limits of my patience

Where my strength peters out

At the deep end of generosity

Where I find myself sinking

At the last bridge of compassion

Where it hurts too much to grin

At the mother-lode of anger 

Where I drop the hammer

Exchanging pain for pain

At the border of betrayal

Where I hear myself saying

I do not know him

The one I long to know

Where I find forgiveness waiting

Like an ocean at a shore

Secret Valentine

Our souls are like a secret shared

Slowly being divulged to us

A festival of clues and parts

We weave into a destiny of sorts

Calmly accepted and fiercely opposed

If I tell you who I am

And how could I not

It doesn't mean I know

I seem so many selves

A quarrelsome lot of fools 

A whirling conclave of birds

A longing to be held and hold

Everyone I meet and say

Your secret's safe with me

The Thought Of Thoughts Valentine

I can feel my thoughts

Gathering at the back of my head

Crowds waiting at the doors

Come for some performance

But right now while

The theater is dark and empty 

I go over my lines with you

It's a strange new beautiful

Play you've given us

Re-mounted every year

Out of the graves of our heads

Like mine now dark and empty

A dim light grows faintly brighter

And suddenly all the lights come up

Before Valentine

There must have been a world

Before this literal one when

A letter was just a gesture

A stirring of the wind

Each its own silent sign

Before the twelve gods gathered

To sing speaking into being

Bestow the sounds each its own

What a cacophony deafening 

They must have made at last

Everyone talking at once

Clamoring to be heard

Until a solemn child stepped out

Onto the quiet empty stage

And spoke the first coherent word

Easter Tuesday Valentine

That first week

Of his new body 

Of crystalline light

And prismatic colors 

I try to imagine

The joy he must have felt

At all he had accomplished

Now on his way to visit

His family and friends

That joy he knew 

Would use up all

The centuries to come 

Filtering down through us

This earth he loves so much

Played With Valentine

One of those mysterious days

When the clouds fly back and forth

Eclipsing then releasing the sun

A lamp turned off and on

A rush of gloom invading

Everything and then the light

Joyfully rushing in 

A child's game or a god's

Now you see me now

You don't I play along

Dashed down in darkness

When you're gone 

Though I feel you still there

Overwhelmed when you return

So Far Valentine

 If clouds used to be trees

Who wrestled free to soar

Then trees used to be thoughts 

Rising green from the ground

But only so far before 

Leaves and birds re-shackle them

To perennial configurations

The evidence of the clouds

Some trees connect

With a new source of feeling

A buoyancy inside themselves

That gets as far as flowers

Clouds caught in their branches

Thoughts that fall and soar

One Who Knew Valentine

Apparently those Greeks were wrong

Who thought a god could never become

A true human being would never

Take on such ignominy and die

A common criminal

So now today they think

Though great he was just a man

But there was one still young

Enough to feel the depths

Tenderness can reach  

Standing beneath his death

One who knew already

From his own experience

Love's origin and end