Picture Valentine

When I elide my many lives
It's like the surface of the ocean
Meticulously drawn and painted
Or the pocked skin of a gray stone
I try to think back to the day
This picture of the sea was taken
To the day when nature
Was even greater than me
And I would have to destroy and redeem it
Smashing through the surfaces
I created to get to the sensible shore
Only more surfaces are laid in the sea
Only more and more the depths go down

First Experience of Genius Valentine

She was playing with her
Five year old atheist grandson
When she confessed to him
She still believed in fairies
On hot summer afternoons
She would sprinkle water
From the hose into the air
And sylphs would build
Their furtive rainbows
He admitted he could almost see them
Running through their colored veils
What for him was fading
For her just coming into view

Boy's Valentine

I saw a boy rushing home
To be beaten by his father
For being late and forgetful
I stood on the road to watch
Some strange shapes of clouds
A cluster of lightening strikes
Like a bouquet in the south
Part of me wanted to run
Right into the storm like that boy
Part of me just stood there helpless
And suddenly it all let go
Like a gush of tears that wouldn't stop
A father calling for his son
A son weeping for his father
A love that will never be done

Closer Valentine

Closer to home I stop
The car on a mountain top
And get out and walk
Excitedly back and forth
Somewhere back there
snaking from curve to hill
I passed my life my soul
Stranded on the side of the road
It came on so suddenly
While I was trying to identify
The different flora that flew by
Just leave me here in this field
As you rush past it said
This is as glorious as it gets

Now Valentine

I get to scold with impunity
Now I'm old I get to rant
At myself for this and that
I get to forget my keys
In the door but not to say
I'm sorry to everything
That comes through it
I get to feel grateful
But never grateful enough
I get to be annoyed by death
And treat it kindly like a dumb beast
Beaten by his master
Who just wants to be my friend

Lasting Valentine

In my youth I turned from fame
And was never heard of again
The hexameters of my woes
And joys disappeared in the woods
Behind my house rewritten
In trillium and Judas trees
And one large open hilltop
Like a great clock
With sun-dials of oaks
I was finally the poem itself
Wandering in animal circles
But no real poem is meant
As long as a summer rain to last

Who Valentine

Who is this man after all
And if he's not real
Who could have imagined him
As the only reality
Worth imagining
He must mean the gods
Still need us both
The blind ones and
The ones who see
He's become some grand idea
Of a selfless world
In which everyone's a self
Like him come back
To his childhood home

Searching Valentine

There was one line I found
In a book I stumbled on
Yesterday pursues me
About how much further we must go
To become a diamond or a ruby
Long past the time the world
Wasn't ready for bodies
Of diamond flesh and ruby blood
I went back to find that sentence
But I couldn't even find the book
Though I looked on every shelf
Where would I have hidden it
From myself and why
Would I now time as usual
Is running and running out

Diagnostic Valentine

What soul pain does my arthritis catch
An inflammation caused by
A sclerosis I've almost figured out
The bones harden and pull away
From the body an adjustment disorder
Affecting locomotion and memory
Which is where the soul comes in
An entirely imagined cloud formation
Of feelings and feeling-thoughts
Only helpful when it disengages
From itself for those few seconds
It can see itself as someone else
The soul growing younger as the body ages

Licked Valentine

Wet hair is no fun
For my long-haired cat
She sprints through the sprinklers
She's spent the hot summer
Stripping off her winter coat
Hair by hair licking it down
Or shedding it in clumps
Left lying around the yard
But just as she's almost naked
And can relax in the shade
The nights turn on the cold again
And she must grow it back
She throws me a baleful glance
But really what can I do
But empathize and pet

Mental Valentine

You know when you have to
Make yourself do something
You'd rather not do
In the x-rays my teeth
Looked like splayed fingers
Or tiny hooves running in clouds
Or a sprouting coral reef
One wearing a temporary crown
When you know it will all be unpleasant
But somehow needs to get done
I steady myself on the ladder
Of numbness setting out
To out-climb the pain
But the thing is already done
The grinding teeth like worn stones
And the ripping teeth like new blades

Bedtime Valentine

A glory that includes trailing diapers
And long cries in the night
Even sleeping learned
And how to suck
How to incorporate
The false and true smile
How to exchange floating
For walking and dreams
For speech how to hear
The clang of an iron gate
On an inner and outer life
You helpless separated thing
How can it not be
A comforting angel
Follows you around
How can it not

Between the Sun and Me Valentine

Between the world of perception
And the world of being
Enough room for a few talks
Between the third heaven
And the viruses of the world
Enough room for a bed and table
But between you and me
Not a hair's difference
We still live at the mercy of the sun
Of course but being one
We set up a kind of opposition
Purely theoretical but yes
Whose very existence
Proves the sun itself exists

The Sun and I Valentine

I play musical chairs with the sun
Following the shade around
Till we collapse on the grass
Chasing one another down
In the shadowed world
The sun is over there
Trying not to penetrate
Too deeply and my heart
Goes out to its infinite suffering
Greater than the world can know
From those burned at the stake
But whose body is it flourishes
In the sun's pure flames
And what could possibly be
His crimes

Morning Meditation Valentine

I feel I must do something today
But I have no idea what it is
I wake up at five and sit outside
In the backwards twilight of dawn
Of course there's laundry dishes
And a few quick stops to make
Just as the light breaches the roof
I was a druid for a moment there
And get to the bank by noon
But nothing I'm not longing for
I can't believe I've forgotten
The most important thing
Pray I know it when I see it again

Flying By Valentine

Something hoped for every day
Of what the sun puts down
On this page I try to emulate
Its blindness toward good
Or ill and give the night
Its due respect the darkness
The sun slowly overcomes
Even the arduous pyramids
And the puniness seen from planes
My growth is a painstaking process
With intermittent lightning flashes
I suspect the gods inject
To spur us on to glory
Seat upright belt tight

Assumption Valentine

If you talk of gods and heroes
It must be in a forgotten language
In which they were the words
Themselves speaking the world
Around them of all their needs
And deeds and foundered creeds
But if you talk of demons and dragons
It must be in a language still to be invented
For which there is no alphabet yet
An imponderable speech
For which water serves as writing
Only then from the depths and heights
Can you utter some human words
Thanking all the worlds around you

No Lie Valentine

We call it getting old
But it's just dying
No time for self-delusion
Or kinder kinds of lying
Not for no reason
Is fall my favorite season
The heart's true spring
The crying out of all its aliments
Color-coded as the doctor's
Hands remove my clothes
Exposing the clarity of winter
In my summery bones
I feel riddled with bullets
Like snowflakes falling
While my soul leaps out

Ghostly Valentine

Patch of sun on my right thigh
The rest of me in shade
A lucky transfusion of sunlight
Its warmth slowly entering me
Through this sudden portal
I can feel it flowing
Under my skin
As it steps down to desire
And peters out in whim
The holy made impure
And given up for lost
But look it comes again
The ghost of light
It circles my heart

Wronged Valentine

It's all so neat and calm
Where I sit down
The oscillating center
Of my morning garden
I see now how the body
Moving from shade to shade
Is so much older than the soul
So much more perfected
So the soul is always chasing it
Cheating on it getting caught
All the wrongs the body comes to
Are carried in by the struggling soul
Trying to shed light on the body
Calling out for the freedom
The body already knows

Mystery Valentine

Is it better not to know the ending
Or is it perverse to read it first
And follow the quietly guilty one
Backwards through his innocent days
Isn't he who sets out not knowing
Where he's going at a certain
Disadvantage to the destination
The pleasure every reader knows
Longing to know the ending
But who would have expected
Not so much the solution of a death
As the revelation of what
it was hiding all along

Both Valentine

Both our burden and our deliverance
The body grieves for the body gone
And the soul for the soul remaining
Which now only one can see
From the angle of divinity
But how can love sustain
This last kind of separation
So much caught short
Bodies just disappearing
You dying but not to me
Eyes closed in a dark room
My soul begins to see your soul
First in shadowy black and white
And then the blues and reds creep in

Prepared Valentine

Every Thursday the sun
Wakes up alarmed
Hearing the clamorous
Garbage truck come down
The alley behind the door
Of the garage wide-eyed
Until the noise moves on
Prepared to run and hide
But holding her ground
Who knew the great sun
Could also be afraid
When the dark earth trembles
And not know for certain
Where to run

Old Lovers Valentine

When at every noon and midnight
The past and the future stand
Staring across at one another
Waiting for the light to change
Before the two rivers of time
Rush forward penetrating one another
Between humming lines of clouds
Shaped like cars and trucks
Or at some empty intersection
Where they must pause helpless
Promising this time not to pass by
Pretending they don't recognize one another
But stop and speechlessly embrace
Right there in the middle of the street

Going On Valentine

And time which is the shadow
Of a realer world goes on
Breathing us in and out
Expanding and contracting us
But she who is doing the thinking
Is already outside the cave
Outside the brain itself
Where thinking comes in
Like the very I of spring
Or the not-I of fall
Throwing itself at your feet
All the effort time takes
To impress itself on things
That hardly matter
While thinking goes on

Operatic Valentine

The open secret of opera
Is that it's only about a few notes
While a man ruins a woman
Or a woman ruins a man
Or a whale rescues a man
Swallowing him whole
In his coffin belly
A few notes that last for three days
Three years three centuries
On stage the blue whale's mouth
Is always open and singing
And it sits there
Like a Trojan Horse
Waiting to be taken in
The great leviathan of love

Together Valentine

A body can only see a body
A soul can only see another soul
A spirit another spirit
They seem to act as independent
Forces and yet combine in us
In strange and ordinary ways
Each defending the primacy
Of its position the body
On probation the soul
Suspended between and the spirit
Clucking like a mother hen
A three-stringed violin
Recording memory's dissonance
The body playing only Bach
The soul taking off for Oregon
And the spirit whirling in a trance
Humming some old country hymn

First One Valentine

Doesn't the bifurcation of the world
Merely reflect the ascending
And descending arcs of homo sapiens
On the ladder of thinking
I mean what comes next
If you decode the ruins
When one half of us
Wants to go back
To being animals
And the other half
Still isn't convinced
The next step
Is really necessary
I think of that first one
Who came into the world
Breaking in two
And see he is all of us

Evolutionary Valentine

If human evolution is a constant casting-off
Of all the forms of plant and animal life
So that only a thinking vessel survives
What is left to sacrifice
For the children of the world
I mean the ones left in hot cars
Or locked up in metal cages
Or stifled by cruel intentions
But still the children come in droves
They stack the auditoriums
With plays and heart-breaking choirs
Words saved from another world
Each one carrying a tiny morsel
Of what slowly moves us forward

Mineral As Moral Valentine

I love geology but
It gets it all wrong
Trying to reject the subjective
Element in all laying down
Of the sediments of the objective
I.e., physical world like a shell
The living mollusk leaves behind
Not so much a record
Of its past accomplishments
As a picture of what
It would finally become
Its empathy and rigor
Interwoven in some future world