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 every 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 

For Your Birthday Valentine

Old age is given

To remember our sins

The done and not done

To go down to where

The mothers prepare

To gather us in 

But not yet not yet

Old age grows greedier

For life than it has ever been

Let me have 

I pray each night

Just one more morning

As a body on the earth

Holding your body near 

Invited Valentine

At the gate

Two guards wait

But you have brought

Your invitation

Which they inspect

And mutter over

You can hear the music

Coming from the mansion

Behind the hill 

While you wait

To be weighed 

And found wanting

Sent back to sleep

Under the stairs

Or else received

Swept into the grand hall

One among that silent crowd

Waiting to receive the Lord 

 

On His Feast Day Valentine

The secret of St. Paul

Who revealed the secret 

Along with his flair for words

And the music of his speech

Was his willingness to travel

To wander the sea without a home

Think of the kind of thinking

He could do hunched in the prow

Of some ship searching the horizon

In calm and in storms

Asleep or in conversation

With the Lord his companion 

What he would write

When he got there

If it would be understood

I wonder how many of his letters

Went astray like the ones

He wrote to us still 

Arriving still unread 

 

Goodbye At The Vet's Valentine

She was the cat

That came to dinner

And stayed for breakfast

For fourteen years

So we fed her though

She never let us touch

Her claws always at the ready

What could we do

We were her prisoners

When it got colder we

Converted an ice chest

Into a heated cabin for her

Lined with old pajamas

At some point she became

A professor of humility

At the local university

At least that was her story

She just wanted to be loved

And still be wild and free

So we loved her as if

We ever had a choice 

Enclosed Valentine

Noted this morning

Every few seconds

A drop of water falls

From the corner of 

The roof my heaven

Distilled from the cold

Night meeting the sun-

Warmed air I suppose

Since there's been no rain

A few clear drops falling

But not so fast I can't

Catch my own true likeness

There for a moment enclosed

Staring back at me

Holding the sun as it falls