Better Half Valentine

The part of me

That doesn't love me

 Fortunately married 

All these years

To the part of me that does

After our brief

Passionate affair

But you kept leaving me

For some other life

Then showing up again

No where else to go

Begging me to take you in

How could I love to live

Without you by my side

Who else will forgive my sins

Visitor's Valentine

My restless cat keeps staring up

Annoyed at the empty chair

Where she often loves to sit

As if it's already occupied

By some invisible spirit

Only she can see

Who I have called

To visit me a creature

Of the sun that fills

And warms the seat

While I wait opposite

In chilly shade for it to say 

How its light gets made

From love that's lived

On such another day

At Hand Valentine

Is Virgo Venus redivivus 

Beauty rising from her bed

Standing to receive at last

The serpent and the crown

How long will she lie asleep

Dreaming of that star's gleaming

Nesting in her growing womb

Is she frightened so alone

A quiet comely girl called to be

The sorrowful queen of joy

Did she pause before she rose

Conscious of the gods' decision

Swaying toward the balance

Feeling the sun bearing down

The moon carving its incision

Finally Valentine

Finally I got down upon my knees

And pruned away the choking weeds

Invading my gold lantana

Prayers down always work

Unless they lead to willful action

Leggy the lantana had grown

And needed cutting of its own

Some straying branches had to do

Unfortunately without their flowers

Until finally only one was left

A new unfolding umbel

A bud made up of many

Tiny flowers woven in a whirl

Delivered from the evil

Of this too eager world

Promised Valentine

Don't forget morning

Actually gets its start

At the midnight hour

When the darkness

Falls over into

The completeness

Of its illusion

Long before the light

Clocks in if

Sun there is

That dawn is a promise

The darkness

However deep

Even if reluctantly

Must keep

Somehow Valentine

He says the gods go on surviving

On the spirit bread we bring them

Our own souls baked and steaming

That aroma in the morning

Their tongues watering for a taste

Of some sweetness saved

Or even a stale crust to chew

But somehow they make do

On our thin earthly gruel

And get on with their daily tasks

Of plowing and reaping

Pushing the chariot sun

Up over their seeded ground

And doling out the rain

Only Today Valentine

When we divide yesterday 

Into tomorrow something

Is always left over

The remainder we call today

A pittance of hours

For our chores and prayers

But how carry over the one

Still living body we love

If only for another few words

Before we fall asleep again

And sail out on eternity's seas

Our dreams' frail boats

In search of something

We can call a soul

Solely Valentine

Tap-tap-tap the flicker's beak

On the door of a dying tree

That opens on a vestibule of blue

A life without leaves to see

One's way back to the trailing sun

But just enough to stand there

Like a naked phallic Greek

Expounding his geometry 

Of light-constructed lines

Crossing one another in the wind

A skeleton of pregnant limbs

Solely dependent now

On the charity of stars the moon's

Slow keening in the snow

Remembered Valentine

I went out walking in my head

Among the waves of words

Written on the stony graves

All my dead thoughts

Turning in their tidy plots

Who fought in heaven's wars

And fell to earth like rain

In search of that single name

Hidden among roses I remember

Planting in another life

Finding only an empty tomb

Still warm from the sun

That filled it with a body's heat

A heart just entering a womb

Egg Of Light Valentine

The almost real and the post-real

The surreal and the plain real

All seem combined in an egg

Dangling above the heads

Of a couple getting married

In one of Raphael's paintings

The critics think it a symbol

Of purity overcoming passion

But I'm not sure it isn't

Something Raphael added

Out of his own second sight

Not a custom of that time

All of his Madonnas are lovers

And all of his lovers Madonnas

All he painted was the light

Unrescued Valentine

I climbed too high

And many books and I

Came crashing to the floor

I lay immobilized

My lifetime's library

Pummeling my chest

One grazed my closing eye

Until all was silence rising

From a hundred sacred texts

It was the end of knowledge

A few broken bones

A few unfinished novels

I couldn't but moan and grin

Watching the dust settle in

I Call Him Buster Valentine

I'm thinking of setting

A mouse-trap for that

Clever cat hiding

Among the branches

Grown too close

To the bird-bath

Where the creaking doves

And eager sparrows come

To drink I have

To cut them back

But that's just one

Of several tasks

I never seem to get to

I say I'm waiting

For my friend to come

On that perfect fall day

To prune and rake with me

To put the garden to bed

And celebrate our dead

And feed that ravenous cat

Double's Dream Valentine

I ran into my double

In last night's dream

We were descending

A set of narrow

Mental stairs together

Him close behind

A large man in black

Hat and voluminous cloak

I stopped to let him

Pass but smiling

Through his moustache

He insisted I go first

So I hurried on ahead

Veritably flying down

Those steps to where

Our train was waiting

To take us through

All night we sat

Trading secrets

And philosophies by morning

We had reached a compromise

He would leave me

His cloak and hat

And I would leave him my eyes

What Valentine

A country can be taken to be

A single personality whose cells

And parts work on mechanically

Somewhere after thirty

The biography shifts

And all that was gained

Or lost in childhood

Slithers toward Jerusalem

Never was a town more taken

Apart and patched together

The city of a personality

A mother and a child

What does the world hate more

I ask you fathers