New Year's Eve Valentine

Aren't I the servant of my sins
And the lord of selfishness still
I pay at the door and come back for more
But back on the dunes of Indiana
And the shells on Sanibel Island
And the hills of Grenadier Park
Where we would sled till after dark
All the way back to Sunnyside
The years of hiding and laughter
Where the past achieves a perfection
The future could only long for
I still feel we turned a corner
Somewhere back there everything
Changed for the better

Eve's Eve Valentine

I know it's not a crime
Or even a mortal sin not to have
Thanked you more Mom
We had a lot to put up with
One another and you my father
I and you weren't one
And though I spurned you
It was as if you and Mom
Had picked up a hitchhiker
In the middle of a rainy night
What could he possibly be doing
And took me as a boarder
Someone always about to leave
For some impossible future

Holy Family Valentine

The mystery of having a brother
Or a sister or the mystery of being alone
Too important a decision
Not to have been a choice
To share the same sources
And yet be so alike and unalike
To understand and not comprehend
Our lives before we were born
What prior encounters
Must have determined
Our present connection
Were we lovers in the past
Or is that waiting still to come

Innocents Valentine

My sick cat listens to my heart
She puts her ear against it
And falls asleep dreaming
Of whatever's going on
In those four chambers
Even when I reach for my coffee
She doesn't stir but cleaves
To that dark rhythm
Like its her religion
Do not fear the lord is near
She keeps repeating in my ear
A new religion of the heart
We listen to coming toward us
But still a long way off

New God Valentine

What if we could unite
All the most admirable things
About each religion in the world
Into a universal faith
A new religion of humanity
But out of the vastness the smallest thing
Appears to be monumental a combination
Of the mountain and the mind
Our new God is incremental
In all things there he works on
Learning and striving to be God
Woe if he passes you by
But he is drawn to woe
And will come back for you

Snowman Valentine

Snowmen always remind me
Of those wooden Russian dolls
Always another one inside
How many bodies we hide
Until we come to the soul
The little atomic doll
Who suggested it all
The coal and carrot and scarf
Discarded in a heap
Waiting to be restored
To the image of a man
A man inside a man
Inside a man
Homeless in our yard

Now You Are There Wherever I Go Valentine

Yes we all have our private lives
But now even your public one
Is hidden from me I wanted
To send you a song you could strum
Learning to play the mandolin
About how we had no idea
Who we were or why
We'd been thrown together
When love embarrassed us
So we'd get drunk to fuck
The light was so bright
We had to dim it down somehow
And though that's gone love stayed
I still hold that body in my arms

Now You Are There Wherever I Go Valentine

Don't hesitate to suggest changes
I might make to my life or ask questions
Or say nothing at all
If I send you these lines
It's because I have nothing else
But love encased in such
Small words to give
So few as these
Cannot assuage the aloneness
Love requires if we would
Have a life together and apart
Letting the world pass through us
Passing through the world

Christmas Eve Valentine

One book alone proves death
Is just another form of dreaming
A deeper reading of the text
Rampant with new meaning
I read and read again
But all the books are burning
In the Alexandria of my brain
Ascending into the ether
From where they will come again
Who is not foreign in this world
Searching for his true family
And figuring out after all this time
Death was really his best friend

Feast of Adam and Eve Valentine

Among the rituals I love
Besides the rain and apples
There is your face
The sacrament of flesh
A rained-on apple
I tore off the tree
And gave you the knife
To cut me into pieces
And offer me a slice
Sweet rain and sweeter apple
It was love forgive me at first bite
They called it a fall
And they were right
As one by one we lost our children

Every Day Valentine

Every day is really two days in one
The one lived in some reality
And the one lived in some memory
Like night and daylight
Part of the purpose of each day
Must be spent reviewing yesterday
So little time is left for the future
The things of our creation
And destruction we hardly notice
How powerful we are
Living to remember what's real
Though we feel we don't really have to
It's all written down somewhere

Must Valentine

Must I grow old
To reach forgiveness
To want nothing in return
For my investment
In myself I lost
Myself selflessly
Must I die to find out
What comes after love
What it's really made of
When it grows old
And twisted ripens
And the seeds split open
What the wind doesn't blow away

Alone Valentine

The long queue at the feeder
Spirals up into the tree
Mostly orderly chirping
Until a fight breaks out
It's all about priority
And the status of the starving
And yet it feels convivial
A parade of fluttering
As if each one knew
They would be fed in time
More than enough to go around
As if they could subsist on these
Dead or dying seeds alone

Take It Valentine

The final gift of Christmas
Is a whole new year
This one has to go
It's been in labor
These twelve months
And only a child to show
Another mouth to feed
And raise another
Empty page to darken
Or illuminate another
Child's rage at having to grow
Or change but just take it
In your arms so new
And promising everything yet

Some Valentine

Some promises I couldn't keep
In over my heart and head
The first half of life spent
Managing the damage of the last
The other half planning the next
But I kept developing the idea of me
Until I could detach or cling
I could play the puppet of the gods
Or rule like an enlightened one
I swam like every swimmer
Between the depths and heights
But there were prayers I couldn't pray
And promises I couldn't keep
But may another day or night

Christmas Is All-Inclusive Valentine

The ones incapable of contrition
The ones who refuse forgiveness
The ones who can't laugh at themselves
As easily as they do others
The feared and pitied ones
Who surround our lives
The blinkered and beleaguered ones
Suffering from crimes of the mind
The sleepless ones who call out
To others to confess their sins
The ones who want to ruin it for everyone
Like that story of the two thieves
So moving to me the absolute
Certainty of the bad thief
Against the tearful confidence of the good

Night Light Valentine

The peace of a cold wind
That drives us down into ourselves
And spreads the snow across the snow
And pulls us down into the darkness
Of the depths of the earth
Where we dream like bears or wolves
Around the fire at the center
While the peace of a soundless breeze
Floats in the stars above us
And finally comes a night
Of absolute stillness
Where nothing breathes or dies
And perhaps for an hour
The sun shines through the earth

Freezing Valentine

I get to wonder now I'm old
About the race of men cold
Mornings when we spread
Odd towels and worn sheets
To cover the flowers from a freeze
Here in the desert
It looks like laundry day
And we've returned to the old ways
Of life as itinerant drifters
And poor immigrant farmers
Wandering in the desert
Seeing all our troubles come
From trying to settle down somewhere
And build a so-called home

Thief's Valentine

It's not that my life's all poetry
It's really mostly steadily prosaic
Quickened by the occasional panic
I'd make a poor criminal
My heart just isn't in it
But a thief of love I try
To keep my columns Doric
And my ashes dry
Until they come again
The chorus in my head
Isn't the 'ic' the 'Ich' the 'I'
In the circle of the dead
Who compose and decompose
What I write down instead

Feast's Valentine

Ours is not a mystical age
Having eaten all our judgements
We've run out of guilt and shame
We keep wanting to turn the page
And put an end to suffering
But on the feast of St. John of the Cross
We're reminded of its purpose
To see visions and to hear voices
Don't be afraid it's me
But who today wants to see
What John and Teresa saw
When they sat in the fire's light
And shared their stories
Of the soul's dark night

Answered Valentine

What lives in the spinning middle
Between dawn and total darkness
What stands out there between
Life and death vacillating
Between heat and cold
Is it not you my soul
A small hut we build
Using the wings of great beings
Hungry for the food that heals
We know is coming to us
Say only the word
In every moment you
Creating us and we
Creating you

Winter Garden Valentine

The plant's life and the plant's body
Are not the same thing
Its body comes and goes
But its life is in the planets
And the sun's rhythmic rays
That stir the roots
Life is slow and then it quickens
When the leaves start to breath
In and out the air we live on
I can still remember where I was
When I first felt this
God breathing in the garden
His body so distant
But his love so near

Struck Valentine

My brain is a piñata
You keep hitting and missing
What are we celebrating today
They've put a hood on me
And I am blindly swinging
Which makes me happy
To hear them laughing
And finally a strike
My life pours out
In souvenirs and candy
I rush to retrieve
I'm only five or six
And fixed in a childhood
I will never leave

Advent Valentine

A few weeks before you were born 
When you were just entering the earth's
Torn atmosphere with the smell of snow
In the air and fires on the hillsides
Your voice whispered to me
From the depths of the womb
I am coming to take you home
In my hands I carry
The purpose of your life
Such a small thing
I almost dropped it
On the way down
But then why come at all
And then you landed in my arms

Gemstone Valentine

The more we lose the spirit
In things to prove we're free
The more the obvious lie
Of the world is believed
What is freedom for if one
Is only free when loving
But we insist on finding out
We want to explore every dark cave
And the sinews of every bird
We push on to ever grander theories
Of the case carefully stepping around
The little gem of spirit at the center
As if it wasn't there
In our refusal to receive it

Possible Valentine

Is it possible I just saw
Sitting here outside
A butterfly in December
Which had been a blizzard once
Up there in the north what's left
Of some great disaster
If you believe love is
In everything we see
Don't you go a little crazy
I mean it's so transparent
It looks like nothing's there
Air and light we see through
But the butterfly comes home to roost
And the disaster cries and cries for you

Held Valentine

Slowly the sun grew in her belly
I could not love you more except
For the force of your love for me
It was like a little flame at first
She feared would die in the dark
I hold you close she thought
But it's only you holding me
When her nephew was born
She saw how it would tear her apart
The unrelenting light in her heart
But slowly she built the body of the sun
Out of her blood and bones
Some days she climbed the hills
And slept among the stones

Half a Valentine

One half of the world
Is everyone talking at once
And the other half
Barely listening
Every winter there are bodies
Buried under the snow
Every summer there are bodies
Stumbled on in the desert
Those greater beings who keep us
Always under construction
Keep extending the day of completion
They're always whispering to us
To come out into the snow
To wander out into the desert

Strict Valentine

Was I absent the only day
The gift of love was given out
Did I come late and sick as usual
And hear only the last instructions
About the homework I missed
And would never catch up on
Enough to pass the tests
I would have to make up
And had I considered a tutor
Or stepping back another year
Or maybe another school
Here the rules are strict
And you look like love's
Or some lover's fool

Awaiting My Signature Valentine

When I sat down with my life planners
So many centuries ago of course
They had it all written out
Even an appended glossary of terms
Which I never did get to
Hundred of pages of fine print
Detailing exceptions and exemptions
With supporting documents
Guaranteeing the unexpected
Would accrue on a daily basis
They were sure my stock would go up
Explained with charts and graphs
The whole element of chance
As almost completely eliminated
When I would reap my vast return

If Valentine

If you're conceived on March 25th
Your might be born on Christmas
Nine months to the day exactly
And if you're lucky it's in a manger
Because no one wants you
Except your teenage mother
And an old man with a mule
Who keep you warm with their staring
And have never looked happier
To have you with them finally
Though they know they're being hunted
And must cross the desert alone
Confident and trembling as they are
To have you in their care
And you to go on sleeping there

Carried Valentine

Young in the old sense of time
The middle-aged priestess was marked
With red tattoos proving her efficacy
A wandering healer to the many
Small villages along the river
And to the distant mountain places
One time she brought back snow
And held it melting in her hand
Dripping into our dead sand
In the children she awakened
A strong desire to run away
And in the old she inspired
A stubbornness to stay
In my study of mummies
She's the one carrying the god
Her hair lofting in the breeze

At Least Valentine

The ingrown nails of history
Lanced over and over by the sun
When it walks in at the side window
With its healing rays asking
Who is not alien in this world
Who does not wander
From thing to thing
Grasping it or throwing it away
But what among the vast array
Appeals to you as ripe
And solemn for the picking
Now that you are conscious
At least of the garden
The trees willed into place

Practical Valentine

Longer hours at the P.O.
And the cat is wheezing with a cold
And the Guatemalan family
Across the street explodes
With twinkling lights
And a huge Advent Calendar
That dispenses sweets
From different countries
Or did I just dream that
Jesus was coming to town
Did I just hope this time
He'd bring his brothers and sisters
A gang of real angels
And no more mangers

Conjunct Valentine

Of course we all believe in astrology
Even if only in our bones
We all recognize the signs
Later that evening we sense
Being touched by the inevitable
In retrospect as clearly nimble
As the stars and raving planets
Charting out the mission of our lives
To regard everything here on earth
As a premonition and a proof
Of a ruling wisdom holding itself
Aloof and yet intimately involved
Slowly untying the tangles
And tough knots of time

Rosy Valentine

Has he not taken on
The waste of the world
So not even the waste is wasted
Has he not gone down
To the stupid and the awful
Things I've said and done
And still I'm clothed and fed
Has he not told me
Time and again when
I'm disgusted with myself
To get a grip on him
And hold on tightly
The way he clings
To the cross I am

Earth's Birthday Valentine

The evanescence of eternity
Consumes me every morning
I listen and the world
Goes to work I look
And it tramps home
What you took to the grave
Keeps wanting to return
And bloom out there
The last blue flower
Whose name I don't remember
How it wants to get back
To the essential chaos
And begin again
To pick up the pieces

Red Tailed Valentine

New breezes squeaking in the trees
But only a chosen few observe
That hawk circling high above us
Three times it hung in place
Fluttering for a moment still
Then fell in slow perfect curves
Spelling out some code or name
Did it signify our dead friend's
Embodiment in its wings
Just for a few bends and turns
Showing off for us
Her new freedom from the earth
Her grace and balance compared
To our bent necks and straining eyes

Continual Valentine

How can you put love
In a penny envelope or wrap it up
And send it off to the Arctic
Circle or to someone hurrying
Through the streets of Zurich
A love as sure as a snowflake
Hitting the fine hair of an infant
In the mountains of Bolivia
Can love reach that far
If it be rapt and pure
Can it fall into a stranger's heart
Stirring a dead fire
Or arrive on the beach at Inverness
With the key to an old address

Washed Valentine

Dee-da-dee dee-da-dee
Three times the washing machine
Sings come and get me
Your chores aren't done
Until you can sit in the yard
Watching two doves in the sun
Talking Polish or Ukrainian
Under the trees over the fence
Like days off used to be
When I was young I did the laundry
On an old ringer washer
Pressing the sheets into cardboard
Dropping them into a tub of cold water
To rinse and ring them out again
Then hang them on the line
Sometimes to freeze dry out there
Under a foggy winter's sun
Blood is the worst stain

Following Valentine

A trail of blood led me
Up the walkway to the gate
Where a pool of it was slowly
Shining turning to paste
I touched it and it clung
Until I wiped if off on the bricks
Enough to know the victim
Was in pain so I followed
The ruddy drops even if it was
To Calvary I would find you
But soon they stopped
The walk went on without
Another drop to be found
What demon crashed down
What angel hurled to the ground
Leaving only a sobbing sound

Hail Valentine

All the leaves are ripped in the yard
And many torn up on the ground
It must have hailed here briefly
While we were on the other side
Of the world visiting holy relics
And profane places and the largest
Falls in Europe where lovers
Leave small locks on the fences
That keep us all from leaping
The statue of marriage
Hollowed out in the middle of the river
At the bend in the rapids
Where the water muscles its way
Green through stones like a living thing

Enough Valentine

Why isn't it enough the light
Shines through the new leaf
So you can see the veins
And a sketch of a flower
Or it could be the face
Of anyone you love
But if that's not more
Than enough let every leaf
Mirror your hands
Climbing and climbing
An escarpment of sky
Leaves pierced by the light
Which seems never enough
Of the faces you love

Leaves Valentine

Its leaves are so large and long
It can only afford a dozen or so
Which appear out of one another
The stem hidden inside
So just as a new bud forms
A leaf at the bottom begins to shrivel
As long as it lives it maintains
This refined equilibrium
From which a kind of dancing
Might later develop except
Sooner or later it sends up a shaft
Its decision to bloom
So long worked on
Though it spells its doom

Beyond Valentine

If evil is self-destroying
And good is self-negating
Isn't it clear which will win out
In the endless end
Unfortunately it's not
To me at times that both
Must have their victories and routs
But that they carry us forward
In a continual back and forth
Lefty loosey righty tighty
We spiral like mountains or trees
At the behest of a greater will
Alive in the little and mighty
Something that's never still

Feast Day of Your Passing Valentine

I close my eyes
When you give me
The kiss of peace
Something lifts off
My anxious mind
A load of mercy
Like a beautiful cloud
For a moment I can
Barely perceive I hold
You in my heart again
Because you give yourself
To me and I
Somehow completely
Give myself to you

More Valentine

Every December the snails come back
To my private Capistrano
Searching for the ancient sea
That used to be here
If you want to speak to snails
You must kneel down
And make surrender sounds
Quiet embryonic keening
As you crawl along behind
Following its silver thread
You didn't know you could be
So soft-hearted under
That fragile exterior
And keep coming back for more

Sometimes Valentine

I like that you wait on me sometimes
And that you don't wait on me
I like how you can be free with me
The casual intensity of your kiss
When coming and going I miss
But it's nothing I don't survive
Without I've come to see
We must let love love us
And take our worthiness from that
However unworthily
Once love begins in something
It can never really end
It may be the only thing that doesn't

Our Valentine

Our Jesus was an only child
With two mothers and the other one
Came from a large family
And was social and outgoing
A friend to everyone
Even to his odd cousin
Who would often run away
To hide in some old garden
As if not knowing how to play
But our Jesus would follow him
And from a hidden spot observe
The younger one among the rocks
And flowers wrapped in a light
That flowed from his arms as if
It would embrace the world

Together Valentine

Minding my own grief
I hum the old tunes
Till you come by
With your stories of heaven
Which turn out to be
The same as here
Only without a body
Whose pieces you let
Go of slowly painfully
So I hum louder
While still we sit
Together in your name
Watching our memories burn
In some eternal flame

Taken Valentine

Mars is too taken with Pluto they say
Battling in the underworld
To get anything done today
So I cut my hair and shower
And feel immensely reborn
Starving I eat too much
But I keep my hands busy
Watching and straightening things
When I go out to sit down
I hear the rumbling of guns
The distant cries of children
Laughter from boats on the Seine
I feel sick with the world's pain
Even as the sun heals me again

Still Valentine (for Teri and John)

Only one small leaf left
On the Clivia bulb a friend gave me
But it's a hopeful green
And two buds have arrived
On the starfish cactus I stole
Years ago from a pal
I'm waiting to see them bloom
Well-named little stinkers
They catch the fall flies
And encourage the Clivia to grow
The yard is wrapped in a stillness
Only found in old paintings
Or in old friendships
Such as we know

Romance on the Rue Morgue Valentine

I like to play detective on myself    
When I have no clue what I'm up to
Some days I feel he's following me
And not the other way around
Which means we'll have to meet
To share leads on what's going on
You need to be more discreet
He'll tell me in that conspiratorial tone
You're following me too closely
People will think we're in love
I really don't like spying on you
But you've lied to me too many times
Not to know when you're telling the truth

Peripheral Valentine

Is it better to savor
One pure thing from the past
Or is it wiser to treasure
A few words that won't last
Or run around the periphery
Trying to absorb it all
The old town on the hill
The sense of being here before
Is there anywhere you haven't
Been asked the world traveler
How far do you have to go
To know you're lost
To know you're found
And just keep going on

Family Drama Valentine

Countries keep pursuing long divorces
While maintaining marital relations
Often the therapist sky is called in
To listen carefully to endless
Territorial disputations
Their religions are for remembering
How it all lovely started out
Each one trying to get the story straight
Each filling in some missing pieces
But losing the thread in time
Of common interest in God's plot
The true and only true religion
The one for the other heart
He buried in their bones

You Must Go To Zurich Valentine

Before you leave for Zurich
Make a list of things to take
And another longer list of things
To do before you go you know
There will probably be snow
But pack your suit for the spa
Why go to Zurich and the cold
When it's in the lovely 80's here
But when will we get another chance
No longer young and barely old
Zurich must want us for some
Unknown reason hopefully
To be revealed to us once there
Maybe a café where a genius will appear
At our small table and tell us all

Picture Valentine

The earth is just a picture of all
We have and have done to ourselves
The crumbling image of its soul
When it looks in the mirror-world
And sees how young it is and old
Each one in our foreign places
Until I immigrated to you
Leaving behind everything I loved
Your picture seemed so quick and real
You earth a woman and a god
How can you have so many children
And still be a virgin-crone
And stand where Ezekiel stood
Lifting his morning horn

Autumnal Valentine

I prefer the gospel
Of radical gratitude
To faint-hearted fear
I am unhappily happy
When I'm not too near
Myself and others grow
More dear I'm selfish
For them to move heaven
Forward and to take me
With them earth not far behind
I want everything to succeed
The evil no less than the good deed
Let it all run to seed

At Your Knees Valentine

I really want to be like Mary
And curl up at your knees
But my overbearing Martha part
Has to hoover the last crumbs
We lift our feet for her to wash
And dry them with her tears
She whirls around our little island
Of eternal peace and quiet
Even if I still don't understand a word
You say the light in your face
Is all I need to see
I call to Martha come look
For a moment into your eyes
But she's wrapped up in another book

All Saints Day

When we treat our unevolved part
Without a compassionate heart
When we add to the ignorance
Of our senses a load of guilt
Knotted on our backs for centuries
When we refuse to respect ourselves
For being born as who we are
And where we live right now
You reading this
Me writing this
Isn't this the one
And only sin we could commit
Not to feel gratitude and praise
For all our days

All Hallow's Eve Valentine

The banal versus the perverse
Has always interested me
Our theological days of yes and no
A light on in the great house
Someone up writing it down
In his letters to the modern Heloise
Does Peter ever mention their child
The desire for God and the love
Of scholarly labor pruning
The vineyards harvesting hives
When God was not entirely
Thought out yet as whatever
Vague memories of the father
Linger on in the son you are

At the Cottage Valentine

When I stepped onto the cat's paw
She hissed and leapt
Through the open door
We were racing to
Get out into the open air
Sorry so sorry but did
She hear me good she
Doesn't hold a grudge
We plunged into the sunny yard
Two bodies in space
I was sorry and glad
She was glad but sore
Just standing there breathing
The sea morning air

Tombeau de Poe Valentine

I suspect Poe would have smoked
Whitman's grass and not gotten high
A lot of aroma without the lift
But he would have loved Emily's flowers
Always the lady's man having lost
All three of his mothers
Their stark marriage would have been
A new intelligence for the child
Of the poem prematurely buried
A little bell ringing in the coffin
Now they're having tea in heaven
Two kinds of bread and cakes
And Whitman visits every morning
Still lusty for goodness sakes

To All Humanity Valentine

What is would not exist at all
Without what was it's like
The individual against tradition
Our habits and proclivities
Transcendent and domestic
Things that happen night and day
We were always curious creatures
Each tribe in its own way
And usually there was one or two
Who knew the truth
Who valued it above all
And who were crushed
Pushed back underground
But who keep rising up again

Missing Valentine

The idea was to go on
Filling in the missing pieces
Of the past to expose
The house of the dead
On an island in the middle
Of a nowhere sea
Like the bird I buried
And then dug up again
A few weeks later
Because I missed his song
One day he simply crumpled
In his cage he who had
Straddled my finger and spoke
His pleas for a kiss so long

Someone's Valentine

Someone appeared on the patio this morning
It was sunny and shady and quiet
I felt its presence and the cat woke up
And looked around at the empty air
So I knew something was there
It was like a feeling looking
For a form or a thought torn
Loose from its moorings
The dissolving spirit of the morning
A sadness and a gladness
Like a gone friend dropping by
A face I strained to identify
But loved once saying
My love would never die

Friendly Valentine

Sometimes I feel I have a soul
Without a body and a body
Without a soul
Like two quarrelsome friends
In love with one another
Though neither will say it out loud
My soul perceives my body
As a dream in which it wakes
Holding another body
A body that always wants to lie down
And a soul that always wants
To get going how is it all
That holds them together
Is a love of travel and the weather

Clear Valentine

You can't accept karmic ties
Without including past lives
That's the only thing the natural
World is clear about
Through its many incarnations
Whatever explanation sorrow offers
It remains our only world
And if you admit the seed-
Idea of pre-existence
As the basis of evolution
You are lost out there in space
Did we dream footsteps on the moon
Would explain the world of dreaming
How it goes on without end

Enough Valentine

I know I'm not enough
Yet I still love you
We are a love a lot together
The comfort we take
It's so hot we want
To go on wanting
When Michael gets back from Mars
We'll have so much to tell him
The first word you gave me
To speak 'Well...I....'
In the half-light of fall
In the time before you had
A memory you could still smile
Brave flower of love
I know I'm not enough

Still That Child Valentine

Michael comes in Libra to defend
The goat-man from the scorpion's bite
It all ends in a manger
And a scary midnight flight
The fairy-tale the stars
Keep reading us to sleep
While the grown-ups quarrel downstairs
Having drunk too much
I love the part where the bull
Comes rushing back two fishes
In his dripping mouth
And the fishermen gather on the shore
For the feast of flowers
Real life is such a bore

Partly Valentine

Isn't most of what you see
The enormity of the river
Of what you don't
You are overwhelmed and drowned
By the invisibility surrounding
Other lives your own
Still a thriving mystery mostly
The enormity of the idea
That you are nothing and everything
Which is only partly true
A fact that can only be appreciated
By a certain kind of greatness
You must inescapably pursue

Night School Valentine

                      "Destruction will be the reward
                        of those who destroy the earth."
                                             Revelations 11, 18-19

Because she was shifted
From mother to grandmother
She never learned to speak or write
Good English or good Spanish
And her older friend
Whose Spanish was immaculate
But who struggled with her English
They went to night school together
And diligently got A's and B's
Just to prove they could
Take advantage of every chance
The ungrateful gringos offered
To go on living always in search
Of the right words for survival

Secret Valentine

Season of myrrh and apple loneliness
Long-burdened friend of sky
When gold fires fill the streets
And the flowery stars drift by
To feed on summer's corpse
And the moon looks you in the eye
And blinks giving it all away
The secret falls apart in seeds
Each one hiding a secret sky
Where trembling it must stand
And lift its arms in praise
Hand holding hand
In these dark days

Time's Valentine

Valentines waste time
That's not only mine
But you too are implicated
In the wasting time crime
Often not difficult to detect
Does love say go to the window
Stop everything you're doing
How does anything get done
Love says it's a waste of time
Our lives building beautiful houses
When just across the street
Love wastes away in a hovel
Writing valentines wasting time

Captured Valentine

Odd how empty a room is
Without a plant to talk to
To remember greenness
As a contingency of the right light
When I look up from a book
Unable to read another word
To watch how the minerals do it
Dissolving so quietly into leaves
Refusing to be just furniture or art
They startle me with the ways
They listen to the light
Even the thumb-like cactus I captured
And brought home to the desert of my room

Across Valentine

I went in to get what I forgot to get
But came back out to find
I didn't need it I think
Like this the dead are thoughtless
But full of feelings for us
And a willfulness that carries
Our memories across the emptiness
Of forgetting how they
Go on living inside us
While we have only thoughts like these
Vague diaphanous veils
Or clothes hung on a line
We who've only begun to feel things
And to do things here

Questioning Valentine

Is humanity more than a story
A foreign object in the world
Fallen to the earth like Gilgamesh's
Friend to love and go
Back to where we came from
What must we be working on
To have come so far from home
Our migrant lives rejected
And rejecting wherever we go
Why would the people who built
The pyramids lie about the reality
Of the spiritual world
That never dies
I'd like to know

Except Valentine

Are all the great poets gay and glad
Except for Shakespeare who was bi
And Goethe who cross-dressed
And Blake who married
What sex I am is a kind of sexism
We can do more than one
Thing at a time both making
Art and living artful lives
From century to century
One life at a time but
What are bodies for
Nothing and everything
Meanwhile great choirs
Are singing us
Into being all

Migratory Valentine

Many crows caw in California
Along the coast as they gather
Toward dark in the tall pale
Eucalyptus trees I remember
But here in the desert this morning
One crow appeared and cawed
Half-heartedly I thought
On a sunny roof nearby
I felt he was missing the ocean
Which was a pure projection
I mean he had only three
Or four caws and was gone
I wondered if even further inland
To the cold heart of the country

Nowhere Else Valentine

I believe in human beings
Only because I have faith
The gods who guide us
Will never abandon us
In their continual growing
Will bring us along with them
Because we are parts of them
And their creation is our creation
Only a god could convince me
With his proofs of beauty
But it was his stoved-in heart
That led me on to complete belief
That we have nowhere else
To go but him

Gospel Valentine

I found myself preaching
That half of life is rejection
And the other half acceptance
To find what you can accept
About rejection and what
You won't just manage
About acceptance I wasn't
Speaking abstractly
About pain and joy
When the surfaces fall away
And nakedness takes on
A whole new aspect
And you accept what you reject
Seeing your own hand
In the preparation of the event

Postcard from Purgatory Valentine

In my modernized and comfortable
Cloister garth I'm vacationing
Surrounded by a few herbs
And late mountain flowers
The trip is going well
Our tour guide and guardian
Of the ancient spirit world
Showed us around today
The actual vessel from which
Emanated the first words
Of the fading gods
Now we're just waiting for our guide
To finish his cigarette over there
With his truck-driver buddy
So we can get back on the bus

Morning Wood Valentine

Cats don't grovel like dogs do
When I was five I thought
Cats were the girls
And the dogs were the boys
And I was right
Two pictures that belong together
Hummingbird people
And dragonfly people
In the same tree this morning
The holiest time of the day
The earlier the better
The sun ambles in
The stray cat people come
To feed with the neighbor's dogs

Old Valentine

You are sweet and you are noble
And you look like lots of trouble
But I took the tumble-rumble
The sex was great the talk was better
It was love that made us young
But why is it always ignorant at first
And poor or living on the street
Even the old don't remember
How love goes on feeding on love
And grows to be so sweet and noble
And so much lovely trouble

Starting Valentine

Or start from the cosmic
And work your way into the comic
It's only Monday and I love you
More the more I love you
Or if all else fails at dawn sit down
And write the histories of your heart
Dare to sum them up
In insignificant phrases
Or else start from the comic
And work your startled way
Back into the cosmic
Who knows where love
Starts from is already a lover
And happily tragic

Aquarium Valentine

If water is necessary memory
And we the fish who can walk and talk
The long way back to the shore
For someone who's never seen the ocean
Not been swallowed by it yet
Its terrifying pleasure
Its sublime gesture
Now the air has caught us
Drawn us up from the depths
Bright goblin fish
And fancy guppies
Enough to fill a tank

This Valentine

Stop with the preferences already
This I like this and I don't like that
I advise myself frequently
But do I listen yes and no
Dodge all the differences
Only if you get there
Can you get passed it
Those who are good will get better
Those who are not won't
Setting up a terrible clamor
Only total adoration suffices
The gods on either side
To feel that anything could be
But this is the moment that is

Boding Valentine

The season of boding began
With a mockingbird fanfare
That went on to become a whole opera
In any case the leaves got up
And left at such appalling
Imitations of the great masters
But touched somehow by his wild
Enthusiasm and stern sincerity
I stood through his whole concert
Alone in my little yard listening
I was not unaware of the world
Out there spinning around us
Which for him was the single place
He could sing himself entirely

Far Valentine

We went too far
But we had far to go
Near went farther
We ran to follow
As close as we are
Isn't summer the reason
Fall has to go so far
A marriage of moods
Culminating in a snowy field
Once I was walking there
I found small mice tunnels
Dug into the snow to warm
Burrows and once I saw a hawk
Swoop down and snatch one
Its tiny feet ascending dangling
And I thought of you

Shakes-pearian Valentine

You and I have to break things down
Into smaller and smaller bites
Until we can't eat any more heart
Until we've stuffed ourselves
With wild venison of roasted
Youth and grief's caviar
Downed with laughter's wine
And we come to our renaissance
Trying to live a Shakespearian life
Keep moving vertically he said
And you will come to a certain
Rose-bush whose thorns
Are stars that prick you
Until you bleed them back

I Am Only a Mountain When I'm Embraced Valentine

I tell my friend don't worry
It will all work out the way
It's supposed to there is
A will that rules the world
Worry about your own two cents worth
That it not go unspoken like the truth
To spend a day with you
How it mitigates my terror
That all is lost sometimes
Doomed to the error of our days
But the circles we go in prove dances
And long walks other times with you
I mean can you explain
A flower you've never seen before

I Am a Photo of the Stars Valentine

The week Mars enters my sign
Not long after the sun and
Gorgeous Venus arrive but
Trying to drive a link
To the stars is exhilarating
Work when I just want
To rest and let them
Settle their long arguments
Like a child listening to his
Parents cry out their agonies
But today isn't that day
Today is the moment of the first
Meeting that pure moment
The distillation and the thirst
Of how many prior encounters
Arriving in a touch a look

A Life's Valentine

Prego I say
Prego prego
Si prego
Prego prego prego
Gracie prego prego
Non prego
I said no
Prego prego
Prego Gracie
Prego
Prego

#5 (In the Cafe)

Dear friend the wind remembers
What the snow forgets
Now you live in the future
Like a Russian doll
Receding into a sliver
Of your former self
Death parents time
To grow up to be
Something that happens
Day to day over there
All I have to do is listen
To your new language
The gift of your advice on how
To go on living here and now

#4

In the garden of your flower
In a field overlooking many hills
And valleys lapping like waves
Free of innocence and guilt
Able to see things objectively
Adding to your earlier studies
Of shore birds and rock formations
The evidence of angels
Metamorphosing into substance
Thoughts accumulating into movement
There among the leaning trees
Where a deer or a pelican appears
Overjoyed to find your beloved
Animals in heaven's breeze

#3

And though a lot of the addresses in heaven
Are clearly marked others have faded
To gray hieroglyphs
But I know that I will find you
Walking toward down some street
Like what kept you I've been waiting
Hours took the wrong plane
Wound up in the spiritual equivalent
Of a seaside town an old man
Talked me into renting this condo
Like we always planned
When we won the lotto
Just joking Lord but it's true
You prepared a place for me

#2

Preparing your own return
In a new room along the shore
Of infinity still acclimating
To breathing light and being
On the inside of everything
Trees and birds as they fly
In and out of materiality
And where inside I feel
Your essence now the forming
Of who you really are
Preparing the particular
Circumstances of our
Inevitable reunion

In the Neighborhood of the So-Called Dead Valentine #1

Surrounded by your pictures of pelicans
Your reindeer and turtles and shells
Your old books that describe
Their individual virtues and lifestyles
Beside the stories of the extinct
Who are plotting their return
How they will re-emerge
From the photos you've collected
Flying back into the bright air
As if nothing has changed
You knew how the earth
Preserves itself through crossing
Out and adding on
Growing more ephemeral and lovely
As you are now it seems

Lukewarm Valentine

Cooler nights and lukewarm days
Where does that breeze come from
An alteration of Middle English 'lew'
("tepid") hot equal to cold
Decidedly undecided days
Followed by nights that make up
Their minds melting into mornings
That feel like a kind of yearning again
This could go on forever
As far as I'm concerned
This having it both ways
I mean the sun sits down
Right beside a raining cloud
And the stars are frozen in place
What more could I want

Equinoctial Valentine

When I was nine and walking home once
Through the alley short-cuts from school
I was such a dreamer then
Still learning what autumn meant
When suddenly a black dog leapt
Toward me barking loudly
And though he was stuck behind a fence
My fear made me so furious at him
I ran right back at him barking loudly
Until his teeth thrust through a hole
In the wire and I went home bloody
Which explains this little scar
I keep on the left of my lip
Which I haven't thought about for years
Though it become a motif of my life
This leaping into the jaws of fate

Please Valentine

Please finish your sentence
Say what you were going to say
It's not so much I want to hear it
As that you'll be finding the words
As you go along some truth
Will come into them if
It's really what you want to say
Even if at first you resist it
Who wants to stand naked
Before the uncertainty of love
So keep your clothes on
And just keep talking
Till you come to it all
Regardless of who hears it
The self you want to say