To My Father Better Late Valentine

Between who he was

And who I was

Nothing in common

To talk about

The fact is we didn't

Like one another much

But refused to show it

As if it could be hidden

But still you were the one

Who carried me

Into this world

Put me here

To love you

Despite myself 

Led Down Valentine

Heaven is miniature on earth

Except everything's reversed

Seraphic mountains holding it up

The dusty feet of angels

Filtering down and at their core

They burn and burn alike

And we are all led down

To the brink of that cauldron

To swim in the fires of love

Only increasing what it consumes

Heaven assumes a human scale

Vast continents and oceans take on

A habitable form where love 

Is always losing until it wins

Somebody's Valentine

When you come to a formal garden

You know somebody's been there

Trying to straighten things out 

When you come to a formula

Or theorem you know somebody's

Been trying to write it all down

The parts that fit together

Or must be put together

We feel if we just understand 

Lifting a corner of the page

Of all that can be known

Then maybe peace would come

The peace we are promised

Beyond understanding here and now 

Brief Encounter Valentine

Right up in my face

A hummingbird rose I froze

And hurriedly tried to explain

I am no flower yet

Then what are you doing here

It wanted to know 

Carefully drilling the air

A little breeze on my cheeks

Well I was hoping you would tell me

How you manage the light

My little I come back trust me

I'm working on some nectar 

A few drops of sweetness

I have saved now gone 

Fearless Valentine

Yesterday I was lucky enough

To meet a brilliant mathematician

Who also happened to be

A beautiful human being 

A wife and mother a professor

I can report she took

A fearless attitude toward

The authority of numbers

When they tried to carry her

Too far from the practical

Consequences of their actions

She could sense the scale

Of the world living behind them

For which they are mere shadows

Of great beings left behind

We might follow to the sum 

Save Your Tickets Valentine

This morning I counted on my fingers

Fifteen different cover songs

From that single thieving bird

It was his first concert

Of the season after a long hiatus

The heartbreak you know

Of losing his mate

He returns to the stage 

Triumphant and chastened

Unapologetic and serene

They may not be my songs I sing

The ones I've saved for you

That break and mend your heart

It's just I sing them better than anyone

When I come back each year 

Over Valentine

Four amaryllis in a pot

I've saved from year to year

Timed to bloom at Easter

And they sometimes make it 

Opening in sequence

From red to pink to white

If sun and moon agree

Let's agree flowers appear

Out of a neighboring world

They really aren't from here

And yet they insist and insist

On coming back every year

Proof of paradise I guess 

The joy of blooming 

Over and over again

Must Be Valentine

What if the boy I was

Just happened to bump into

The man I've become

Him fifteen me eighty

It was a long walk to school

And often he didn't make it

So it could have happened

In some art gallery or riding

A streetcar to the end of the line 

Swallowed up in some book

Missing his stop again 

Me asking what are you reading 

Him glancing up from the pages 

What must be our life my friend 

Still Valentine

We can feel the will of the world

In the rivers and the creeks

And the great oceans

Pondering our fates

Aren't we all Magellans at heart 

Crafty our rigging creaking

As we inch toward some horizon 

What if everyone in the world

Became a sailor again

Islanders in the sea

Of the will of the world 

And still hovering out there

The real world

Waiting to be found 

February Flowers Valentine

Is the light every morning

Not a kind of speech

A language that keeps evolving

In the mouths of gods

Arguing with one another

About the way forward

Where to place the darkness 

For maximum effect 

Assembling themselves every

Morning for the great procession 

Into and up over their little

Seedling earth even to here

My waiting yard of weeds

And just down the street

A blazing bed of poppies

Like an eternal flame

Saying your name 

Figuring It Out Valentine

I think that time is

Our only real problem

How to penetrate the puzzle of how

To let it use us wisely

There's just so much of it

To account for

So much medicine

And mathematics

To be applied and adjusted 

While everything

Dances around

The way it does

And how when love

Comes into the picture

Time matters less and less

And more and more

In the same moment

And we are left together

To figure it out alone 

Snow Moon Eve Valentine

I feel how you can also feel

How strong fragility can be

Carrying the beautiful bowl

Of your life through

The crowded streets 

A grown child

How it all depends on

The most delicate operations 

Bodies flowing through bodies

With the dexterity of stars

Each I in its orbit

I know how you also know

The loneliness of our companionship

Calling out to one another

Planning where to meet sometime 

And have a glass of wine 

And gaze out on the ocean 

More Valentine

The more I sit here

It seems the less I know

Pictures come and go

But nothing sticks 

My brain is the banging door

Of an abandoned farmhouse

Somewhere in the hills

Of Uruk or Slovenia 

The more I sit here

It seems the more I get

Taken out of myself

Piece by piece slowly

So close I come to letting

The world completely replace me

And I can finally stand

And let the sun embrace me

As only the sun can 

This Day Valentine

Between two round clouds

A large X in the sky

As if it would delete the day

Draw a line right through it

Before it even gets started

But by noon the sun

Leaves not a doubt

In the blue flying by 

That this day has come

To be what a day can be

When it pulls itself together 

Sweeping through mountains

Death-defying deserts

Coming to rest in your hands