New Year Valentine

Every year readier
For a better year
As if a hummingbird flew near

Whispering eternity in my ear

The whir of memory once
So clear now a blur and blear
 
Of burning fog in which
The world is lifted
Out of its enchantment
 
Every morning by some brave bird
Willing to risk its wings
For a few old seeds
 
While the cat sleeps under the tree
And another year
Leaps from me

Christmas Valentine

If your sister is a little shit
And your mother a mound of manure
And your father steaming excrement
 
If your father is the devil
And your mother mammon
And your sister vile
 
And you don’t even get a card
Filled with insults and invective
Or an empty box to open
 
To remind you of your heart
All the skin picked from it
Like ribbons torn away
 
Still call this Christmas merry
Only a heart that’s empty
Can be filled with light today

Solstice Valentine

Finally again for one day only
The earth comes to a total standstill
All the governments all the markets
 
All the churches shut down
Nothing moves and everything
Comes to nothing for a moment
 
People freeze in the streets
The end of everything is visible
That way just around the corner
 
And then the strange realization
Shared by everything at once
There is nothing there
 
Nothing to fear
At the end but to turn
And walk back again

Childish Valentine

In late December one tall dandelion
Gone to seed glows in the sun
At the dead center of the garden
 
How do such things happen
Inconsequential to millions
But the first thing I see
 
Its round head of white hair
Hoisted above brown leaves
Angled for take-off
 
It really shouldn’t be there
Yet everything’s been prepared
For the right breeze

Something about it

Heading for childhood
All over again

Walking Valentine

I keep coming back to the plants
And the trees surrounding me
As if they could capture me
 
As if I could penetrate them
Just taking a walk around
We could mingle our forces
 
But just to grow up isn’t enough
For a flower it must die
And the leaves go on
 
It must be the example
Of something embedded in the future
Something we share
 
And go out looking for
If we are ever
To come to love

Stoney Valentine

Three stones convene
On a sunny table
When a thought walks into the room
 
The stones converse like corpses
Or buried treasure silence
Holding their wrists
 
They were only children
When they had to start out
Not knowing where they were going
 
Burning lifeboats and nights
Under icy stars
Like shepherds without a sheep
 
All for the Bethlehem of America
Or to pay their taxes
To some greedy king

Unwritten Valentine

Lines in the sky
Lines in the sand
Lines in the face
 
Some faded away
Some were double-crossed
Some multiplied
 
I can’t tell for sure
If they’re underlining something
Or crossing something out
 
But now it’s gone and gone
Whatever was written there
Probably the final instructions
 
For enlightenment how to see
The rainbow from the other side
As the chalice of the world

Saved Valentine

If I look down I see
A lined blind page
If I look up I see
 
Leaves rustle a bird
But there’s this tree between us
And I’m not getting up
 
I’m lifting one arm up to the light
While the other one
Writes this down
 
Sometimes it’s a wave
Sometimes a salute
Or a sign of the saved
 
A bird makes
Flexing one wing
Then the other

First Valentine

As the leaves build the bulb
So the bulb builds the flower
The original marriage
 
The ephemeral flower
Just another way
Of bringing color to life
 
But what is this color
Broken light
In its death throes
 
Slowly taking up
A new kind of light
Of things from within
 
Can you feel it
I mean it’s just the first
Stirring of life

Desert Roses Valentine

This one keeps its leaves in the cold
But has few red flowers in the summer
This one sheds its leaves
 
Shivering at the first breeze
But is loaded with pale pink flowers
Spring through summer
 
Different sensitivities and positions
To the sun though they share
The same extinct mother
 
Disappeared into her two
Bulbous daughters
Her divided mind
 
Multiplying her kind
She loves me
She loves me not

Berruguete’s Valentine

Three days I stared at Pedro Berruguete’s
Almost surreal painting c.1505
‘The Annunciation’
 
It was as good as I could find
To staunch the flow of the world
As good as I could want
 
On the second day I finally noticed
The white blur of the dove
Up in the left corner and the single
 
Gold thread spinning from Gabriel’s head
I could feel the enormous respect
They both have for one another
 
But it’s what is there between them
And the central object of the painting
The 3-D effect of the light that caught me
 
Falling through the far window
Into the empty room behind them
Like the sun into her womb

Sacrilegious Valentine

She gasped at the altar
Dropping the F-bomb
To her own chagrin
 
Immediately she threw a kiss
At the picture of the Savior
Furious with her sin
 
To bring the dirt of the world
Into this holy place
Defile the peace
 
Brought anguish
Wrinkled up her face
She would have knelt
 
But that would only make it worse
But did the Savior wink
Or was that look a curse

Half Valentine

Your body’s only half
Of what I love about you
The insistence of our senses
 
Of what we share in seeing
Speech and touch
In this dark world
 
The beauty of what’s left behind
Always arriving right on time
Memory is so porous
 
But some things rise to the surface
Once your other half
Appeared to me
 
And I could see
What I love in you
Gleaming eternal purpose

Immaculate Valentine

When they could see
That your resolve was sealed
That you were really leaving them
 
When they gathered around the gate
And watched you enter
That fragile body
 
When the lights were dimmed
In all their houses
And the dogs asleep
 
When a dark chill fell
From heaven when the earth
Took up its will
 
To go on living I recall
How much depended
On a loving girl

Rosy Valentine

If my enthusiasm snags
On sorrow’s thorn
And my salvaged flesh
 
Seems all I own
The abyss of being nothing
I must cross
 
To where the rose is weaving
In the roots
A whole new rose
 
Seems far from here
In the darkness
Of the glistening earth
 
Not dead but buried
Cooked and eaten
By some passing god

Imagined Valentine

If still an amateur of the imagination
If not his only lover
If not for him as he appeared to me
 
In his human costume
We soon disrobed
We accepted the perfection
 
Of the body we could tell
Our souls weren’t nearly ready yet
For the advancing resurrection
 
But we could see how it was
Being made up slowly composed
Sketch after sketch
 
Our bodies one
More stretch
Of the imagination

Moon’s Valentine

The last will and testament of the moon
Is being torn up again
To be carefully rewritten
 
But not carefully enough apparently
The dog who cried wolf
The perfectionist of distress
 
Let me take the world
From this angle let me
Make your mind the aperture
 
And your heart the little click
Speaks the camera of the moon
The print I leave behind is you
 
But still you pull on me
And blame me for the tides
You ride when I am full

For Ages Valentine

Cold coffee on a cold day
An Atlantean light
Pervades the bay I dream
 
Is resting on your eyes
A world of every luster of gray
The calm despair of a few boats
 
Abandoned on the wavering shore
The sky indistinguishable
From the sea
 
Yet that’s where we met
In the fog of heaven
And must meet again
 
Watching the sun dissolve
Behind the clouded earth
For all it’s worth

Late Quartet Valentine

In the plant quartet I planned
One blank musician stands
With the others close at hand
 
In articulate silence forever
Fingers at the ready
Always about to begin
 
Or as if the music has just ended
And they freeze in place
The last note enveloping them still
 
As if what they play enchants them
And whatever the music wants
They have decided to become
 
That cello of white going yellow
Advancing some theme at the edges
Its leit-motif of green

Blessed Valentine

In his last great work
‘The Hummingbird Wars’
The story of his early years
 
Which he wrote in blindness
Transcribing only what he heard
From the birds flying in his head
 
Philo the final tragedian
Often speaks of his mother
A bride and widow on the same day
 
But already pregnant with him
By a strange incident in the temple
And always resourceful and dignified
 
Even as a young girl
Sensed the importance of his words
And knew she was blessed