That Light Valentine

What taper will you take
Into the darkness of your death
What basket of light
Hearing your own footsteps
Loud in the long hallway
Of pitch-black night
With nowhere to run
Will you start to come undone
Of course that’s the point
No I mean will you lose
You equilibrium or spine
Forget you are mine
And I am thine
That light written
In words on a ring
The darkness
Cannot comprehend

Too Simple Valentine

What is mostly wrong with us
Is the very idea any one person
Can own great wealth or power
And it not be a sickness on us all
Equal as we are to the task of living
If we are ever to get to
The sacredness of each one
As an actual reality
Isn’t it only the greedy
Who defend greed
And that what is shared
Always tastes better
The drink we take together
In honor of one another
As sister and brother

Free Valentine

The task is to stay tender-hearted
But not so much it muddies the mind
Grim to a point but not gone
Over to the other side either
Of sadness where falsehood
Arranges its resentments
The task is to stay as stern
As the task beckons us
To move past laughter and tears
Having incorporated both
To volunteer for the invisible
From which this visible world results
And keep a vigil always at that line
Where out of nothing flows
A free creative love

Children’s Valentine

One morning two green grasshoppers
I suspect one was the mother of the other
Leapt into the cat’s blue water-bowl
One landed on the rim but then
Slid in while the larger one
Dove to the bottom of the bowl
And saw there was no escape
But then a man came along
And dumped the bowl of water
In a hanging pot of yellow flowers
Freeing the grateful grasshoppers
Who now found themselves
High above the ground
It was scary to look down
But with a single bound
They made it without a sound

Returning Valentine

The pain of thinking of us
In the service of our pleasure
When we were young and craved
To go back to old cosmologies
Leave the dirty city for the farm
Carry water burn wood
Plant an orchard on the edge
Of the world and stand
Under swaying fir trees again
In the dead of winter
Under a snow-laded branch
Where our deaths lay hidden
While we were curled in our nest
Of pleasure without measure
Before the pain of thinking began

Ruling Valentine

The astral body of the butterfly
Reflected in the colors of its wings
Extends for a great distance
Permeating everything around it
All we see is the residue
Of its continual accomplishments
The four planes of its flight
In this case an orange geometry
Like a little drawing of its ego
Left behind to flutter around
A prayer-flag for the vine
But don’t think they’re peripheral
To the main theme merely anecdotal
In my secret religion
It is they who rule the world

Distant Valentine

It is true we have only a few
Moments of pure lucidity in life
But there is still gold and porphyry
In the hills of the brain
Though the prospects looked mostly
Dim and remote for extraction
We keep digging deeper
For the heart of the mother-lode
Is it the last of the sun
Clearing the hills we’re chasing
Our craving for distances
Our attachment to what’s here and now
While the great Now of everywhere
Goes on ringing all around us
And the little brain renews its chatter

A Valentine Like Her

It’s just like her
To go on ahead of us
Scout out the secret campsites
And the hidden beaches
She knew the value of a tent
And loved the old ways of childhood
Before the white men came
The hunting and gathering days
I will set up three tents
Moses said one to the Lord
Of the harvest one to the rain
And one to you old friend
I will build a holy place
In my heart against your end

Mirrored Valentine

Who would try to reach inside the mirror
And lift the book that’s resting there
And yet we do it every day
The world reflected in the world
We take for real and trust
Barely aware of the unreality
Hiding in every material thing
Yesterday’s residue washes up
To smother tomorrow’s shores
And the book I took from the mirror
Bleeds a torrent of already-words
That shatters the glass of the past
Only on a few pages does it say
Where the immeasurable lasts

Guided Valentine

When attention becomes concentration
Becomes separation from the brain
You come into the hinterland
Where the beasts of the imagination
Growl but let you pass
Your guide hurries to meet you
Our time is short in this timeless place
Look carefully he whispers
Pointing back to the distant earth
See what thinking’s made
Out of a twisted braid
How the weight of matter
Is all that holds you down
And the struggle to love
To which you must return

On Father's Day to Mother Valentine

This morning the passion vine
Is full of its pinwheel flowers
Two shades of purple around
The yellow knobs of its pistils
Its color reminds me of
The ‘Nelly Moser’ clematis
We grew by the door years ago
And its scent of some perfume
Used to anoint the dead
To overcome the corruption of the flesh
The two-way street of passion
Whose roots need a cool run
And whose leaves send out
Their clinging tendrils

Changeless Valentine

A bee sounds its alarm
Merely its two wings beating
And the mockingbird preaches
All morning but who-who-who
Is listening so he keeps on
Through the night his karaoke
Of the top ten hits of history
On automatic repeat
Demanding no one sleep
Stuck on some mythic princess
Caught in the thralls of love
Waiting for the riddle to be solved
And yes I’m listening like a child
Wanting the same story every night
And upset if anything’s omitted
Or one note is changed

Thinking’s Valentine

Thinking struggles to stay awake
While its two dreaming disciples
Go on dozing in the garden
Thinking tends the midnight fire
Starving to care for
Its two grown children
Thinking is not ashamed
To wash dishes or toilets
Or sit idly biding its time
Thinking realizes it’s alone
Holding itself equal
To its untold perceptions
Thinking is the cup
The father passes back
To his son or daughter
Here drink and live hereafter

Posted Valentine

Mail comes in the shape of the mourning dove
Brochures smelling of here and there
Letters once looked forward to
Now just perennial bills
For which I mourn with her
But in the afternoon
The hummingbird breaks strange news
Of another more peculiar world
Whose citizens and denizens
Live in a future of black and white
So evil is obvious and virtue plain
And finally everything makes sense
Though they still struggle to decide
That hummer-bird replied
When I was stupefied and mute

Actual Valentine

I could confess we’re sitting on the Elbe
Clutching hands and elbows
But that’s already happened
The sin of breakfast at dawn
Made up for by museums
And hair-raising traffic
For the education of the soul
Takes so much time
That I actually don’t remember
Crossing the bridge we must
Have because the sun
Is now on the other side
Or what we take for the sun
That weaving of light all around us
In which we’ve just started to live

Gone Valentine

A moth on my window
A little reddish pyramid
With feelers coming out
Of its glowing capstone
In my empty glassy desert
Full of mirages and wildness
Thoughtfully arranged
But when I returned
The pyramid had dissolved
Into the glass it was another
Airy day slipped out
On that moth’s wings
Gone where the light can’t find it
And the moon won’t say

Not Us But Time Valentine

Warmth brings life
And life brings scientists
The theory of the seasons
In its first formulation
The long pause of summer
Like an equals sign or a colon
Giving it all a mathematical sheen
Until the trees start
To fall apart on the other side
And something happens
To time and space
Too terrible to admit
That they both die
That time has to die
And space go on alone

Lines With Nowhere Else to Go Valentine

It’s not because of the heat
We sense defeat
It’s not because of the cold
We’re feeling old
A word bestows honor on a thing
Like being knighted
After being dragged out
Of the dark forest of the unknown
All those expressions of regret
That never got sent
All those debts unpaid
Heading out on some Nazca line
For Interstate 9 do you remember
That chilly night on the coast
Of Mexico we drove for coffee
To a little shop on the edge
Of town we sat at an outdoor table
Between the dark beach and the lights
So infinite and calm

Insomnia’s Valentine

Now sleep is steep
I cannot climb
Down the ladder
Or lift off the roof
I’m stuck in a stupor
Of dreamed sleepwalking
To have a look at the stars
I wish you were with me
To huddle together
In such a bright night
The great beings of light
Tumbling around us just as
Vincent painted them
And one bird out there
Still singing in its sleep

Skin’s Valentine

Out of certainly guilty love
We made a child and saw
We were the instruments of beauty
Proved useful after all
After so much uselessness
Settling the question of joy
In our lives as wannabe
Artists and musicians
Now we would have to
Work even harder
To follow her example
Of how to begin
To work on ourselves
To get the pictures right
The feel of your skin

Mocking Valentine

Mocking the birds
Is a good way to get killed
If you have that in mind
As we all do for moments at a time
But today a five year old
Leapt from a parking garage
Did she still believe in flight
Or overdo some resentment
She could not restrain
There’s something so magnetic
About the mystery of death
Resisting it at every pull
To find the medicine that cures
Our mockery of birds

Climber’s Valentine

The Himalayas we could be climbing
Aren’t in Tibet but all around us
If we could have the good sense
To walk through a burning desert
Toward some kind of simple life
Of what are we not capable
Rich bodies are scattered
On the mountain of death
But in the desert the seeds
Of courage unfound and unmattered
Will have been planted
The migration to a real life
For which death is
The down-payment

Lead Us Not Valentine

Once a fat mosquito
In a white tuxedo
Accosted me in the street
He was a little man
In a red cravat
With such authority and fame
So I asked if evil is just
Good in the wrong place
Then where are you from
Where do you belong
In the evolving realms
Of irresistible temptation
Like an itch an inch
Is all you need you say
And a drop of that magic blood

Seven-Story Valentine

That young monk who sang
‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’
So sincerely I was embarrassed
Who left soon after
Got married had kids
They called me ‘His Nibs’
My nose in the air
Because I couldn’t see right
Nor could I sing on key
So the abbot told me
Just mouth the words
Of the Divine Office
You’re throwing everything off
Who eventually was hospitalized
For paranoid schizophrenia
When the mountain came crashing down
Now I sing Te Deum in my way
To the ancient clouds above

Such were the fools of love

Pentecostal Valentine

The heat rises steeply
In the mornings now
Like a rocket pun intended
And out pop umbrellas
Among the few wise people
Who know the sun is out to get us
The governments and the churches
Who have taken shelter in the shadows
Under rocks and plants
Geometrically rearranged
To exclude the broken-hearted
The wise man goes for groceries
And the wise woman shops around
They’ve seen what heat can claim
But keep the desert blooming
In their heart of hearts
Each one under his flame

Maybe Sunday Valentine

A merry-go-round of words
And yet our one accomplishment
To speak our many truths
To someone who would listen
Yet not recognizing its disguises often
And that one can be so wrong
And feel so right about nothing
We can’t go on this way
And yet how long we’ve been traveling
What if the only law
Was love and compassion
A new neighborliness
Like in church when you can turn
To shake hands and
The kiss of peace is exchanged
With friends and strangers
Perhaps when enough feel this way
Evolution will take one of its leaps
Or maybe it already has

Original Yellow Valentine

The same yellow in the flower
Is doubled in the fading leaves
So there’s always a hit of yellow
In the garden a few leaves
At a time always fading
Among the green so it looks
Like a rose which it isn’t
When it blooms and the leaves
Look like fading petals
Yellow is my favorite color
After blue and green he said
Isn’t yellow the original color
Of flowers and all that fades

Disintegrating Valentine

If plants are stationary pets
Harnessed to us obedient
That must be groomed and fed
And these stars tonight
Awash in our fears
Must be taught
They too on their leashes of light
Fall down without us
When will the thinking part
Overcome the willfulness
Of some over-arching plan
To have the heart go on alone
To have the physical world
Dismember us
Atoms spinning in space
And to forget our home