Or Else Valentine

Looking over today's agenda

Of unprecedented events

Emergencies emerging

Right on schedule

The world I am staring

At the world over there

Containing me as much

As I encompass it

I feel the basic smallness

Of us all might be

Our greatest gift

Our infancy requiring

Ever-caring gods

Or else we're lost 

Narcissist's Valentine

I've got to be careful

Not to become too much

Of a caricature of myself

An object in my own mind 

That unavoidable mirror-image

I carry around with me

Lost in self-reflection

And yet it's also true

I'm always thinking of you

Whoever you are 

We must find a way

To dissolve the world

Between us it is nothing

But a flimsy veil 

Waiting For Them To Bloom Valentine

When my cat died

After fourteen years

With our consent

The Vet sent me

A condolence card

And a packet of

Forget-me-not seeds

Little black holes

I planted in two pots

Enough memory to go around

If they push through

St. Francis has assured us

Of animals in heaven

When it all comes around again

They will ascend to human 

Endless Valentine

This morning's meditation

Should you care to accept it:

'Mind is always conversation'

There are always two at least

Two together endlessly talking

At first there was only one waiting

On a bench outside a hospital

Until someone comes along 

And all the talking stops

Silence listening for the sea

Time is the first to go

Then space trundles after 

Confirming your arrival 

Praise Valentine

To our masters

Time and the sun

To our midwife moon

Birthing stars

Which ones are ours

To all that sets them 

With such offhand precision

What's not to love

But how can it be

Taken and given back

My life my lord

After all these sins 

You're still at work on me

Still carrying me along 

Being Thought Valentine

Why thoughts fall into our brains

Makes me think of rain

Or snow falling softly

Some land with a thud

Rocks falling in the head

An avalanche of sorrow

Rushes past and then

The mother comes along

The mother of all thoughts

Who stares at me and dares me

To get up off that chair

To breath this morning's air

And be the thought you are 

Waking Early Valentine

He dreamed of a spring

Gushing out of the air

Hanging and flowing there

No earthly thing

It looked like lymph

Or watery blood

Running from a wound

Without a sound

Down and down

Until it couldn't be seen

Only stopping in pools

To rally the stars

To light and put out

The candle moon 

Wanted Valentine

I wanted to be able to sing

My heart out in that choir 

But I have no ear or throat

For what the keys require 

I wanted to be able to dance

For my lord but I could only

Flail my legs and arms about

Barely keeping my balance

I wanted to be able to add

And subtract remember

Without regret 

How to carry the one

Over to the dividend

But I could never sum it up

My answers all were ciphers 

Until Valentine

Up until Tertillian

A priest in Rome among 

The ghosts of Greece

(His head was full of statues)

We had no way of knowing

The very impossibility of it

Was what made it true

Changing everything forever 

Tertillian Tertillian

I love to say your name

You were the first to confess

The audacity of faith

What rises above all reason

The pure gift of grace 

While I Valentine

The angels in my yard

Do make lovely things

And it's true I gave them

Free rein inviting them in 

But what they've done

With the space I love while

I wasn't watching I find

Mildly overwhelming 

The agave has given birth

To three little ones the pampas 

Grass is shedding seeds

Mapping out the breeze 

Where these angels hitch a ride

Laughing at all the work they've made 

This Time Valentine

Ours is a slippery world

Hard to know

Where to take hold of it

But when we do find

Something or someone

To love more

Than ourselves

We hold on tightly

We can feel the mountains 

Around us and set up camp 

In a wide open space

This world slips away

All this time under it

This longing to be loved 

Sacred Valentine

I remember as a boy

Candles blessing my throat

A cross of ashes rubbed into

My third eye the taste

Of God coating my tongue 

My poor performance

As an altar boy sneaking

Wine in the sacristy 

The sins I couldn't confess

Lined up like a rosary

The kiss of peace

I was given to carry

And bury to rise again

Running toward it I see

All my life as planned 

Carried Valentine

A gray volcanic head

Rescued from the sea

I brought back to the desert

And set up at my gate

A hole cut out of it

In which a small

White shell has lodged

An eye that looks down

At me when I approach

Of a serpent tamed to stone

I carried back and lifted

Into place to meet

Its determined stare 

Each day as best I can 

Out Of Valentine

The clouds those gods

I hold in high esteem

Night and day passing over 

I think they carry joy

And sadness around

And out of this world

Continually wrestling

With the light or breezily

Sailing across the moon

But when they're gone

The sky is never bluer

The stars never brighter

We see what those gods

Have made glory

Out of sorrow 

Two Man Valentine

Van Eyck's stalwart Adam

Has the face of a man

You'd like to get to know

Nothing has happened 

To it yet except beauty

And he has no idea

What to with it or what

It has to do with him 

But with Raphael he's

Almost unapproachable

The eyes of the first innocence

Ready to give itself away

How else can love be known