My Last Memory Valentine

In the midst of remembering everything

You said forgetting is a kind of turning

Aside a pause for a moment I can't

Remember what I haven't

First forgotten or what

Comes next is a blur

A slowly clarifying picture

Now that I remember you

Remembering the end of us

Was really the beginning

Of memory's tricks and tortures

The elusive truths for which

The future searches

Knowing you're among them

Darling Valentine

Do we take the light

For granted and then

When it turns its back 

On us we sleep

Through its specters 

Darling light

Creeps up

Through the ground now

To warm and chill us

But what if no one

Knows it no one

Notices its arrival

As if the sun rose up

And no one turned to see

Half A Valentine

In the first half of our lives

Spent in various schools of thought

We learned to put things together

And pull them apart

Amassing a foolish wisdom

In the process of thinking

Our way into the heart

But then everything stopped

And started back the other way

In the second half of our lives

We began to trade everything

We'd learned for love

Until there was nothing left

Of wisdom's wounds

Thought Valentine

I thought of God as a thought

That thinks the world and us

Being one coherent thought

Eloquently put continuously

Into every language picture

I thought God as a thought

So needed the world

And us his thinking

Could reach even us

His goodness would

Command it his feeling

For life would fill it

I thought of God

Not as the thoughts

But the thinking

 

Yellow Valentine

I'm going

to take a hot

shower

after I 

rake these

leaves

I could

shake

the tree 

but I wait

for each

one to come

down in

its own

good time

I have

my rake 

and arms

and legs

Feast of the Innocents Valentine

What a risk

he takes

on us

he did not

back

into it

but came

wanting it

to place it

all on us

that we too

may yet prove

a fine wine

a nourishing

bread

Don We Now Valentine

For my 77th Christmas

The only thing in  the whole sky

Is the cloud of a dove I swear

The size of a mountain

Coasting by emblem of love

Searching with its questing eye

(We can only see it from one side)

For some pure heart to nest in

One time long ago it must

Have found one and so returns

Year after year anxiously seeking

Those who trail after him

Ranks of spirits on thrones

Scouring the earth with green

And above where love is

The bluest emptiest garment of sky

Momentary Valentine

The planets pick up where we leave off

And carry us to our next assignments

They let us rest a while in their lights

Sketching out new provinces and maps

Planting them in us while we dream

And stand there at the end of fields

Winter farmers gazing back

Singing their seeds to wake and stretch

Each in its own delicate moment

They too are subject to a greater weather

The alignment of a deeper will

Through calm and torment

Opposing and conjoining still

As love would have it

Geneology of the Spirit Valentine

Both my parents have passed away

Their parents and their siblings

All the way back till the blood gets lost

I can trace the proliferating branches

Ranged above me out of sight

As if I were the trunk from which

They'd sprung and not another falling leaf 

But this Christmas we all got together

I was just sitting there when

Suddenly they all surrounded me

Circle upon circle rippling out

So many surprised recognitions

Until we filled the world and more

With not a single soul left out

What Valentine

What makes the earth the envy

Of the cosmos and cradles it

Among fiery architects of light

The eccentric orbits of archangels

And lifts it up as its first-born

Exalts it among the hordes of suns and moons

What puts its finger just here 

On the shining gem of the wound

The perfect climate for imperfection

And says yes I will settle here

And make me a human creature

The oddest thing in the universe

I will place an infant in his arms

And wait till he comes home to me

Earth's Valentine

I will not rise again

When I am dead

Unless someone rises in me

While I am here on earth

The soul is a fledgling bird

Whose wings weren't meant

To merely flap about

Rearranging the nest

But must learn to lift

Off into the air from tree

To tree if it's ever

To make the great migration

Through many resurrections

Sun and star light in its veins

Ceremony For A Stopping Valentine

When the sun stops from our prospect

We stop too and turn around

And look back at ourselves as we really are

A split-second is all we can take

And then we turn to face the sun

With the strength of someone

Standing just behind us

Who's been there all along

And all the mercy we have gathered

In our lives so far is added in

To tip the scales as we wait there

Wavering in the sight of the great stars

Wavering above us so it all

Starts to sway like a body on a donkey

As the sun-child turns back our way

Kept Valentine

It never gets really dark here in December

Though you can sense the light descending

Like someone sipping from a glass

The sun's warmth less and less

Which is a blessing given our long hot summers

But having grown up there in the north

I would not call it winter either

What we have here in December

More like a pausing in suspension

You can hear the earth breath in

Up there in a gasp of snow and ice

While here we keep the spring alive

For you its sunny days and chilly nights 

The love of expectation in the trembling air

His Valentine

In the difficult process of discovering myself

I had often to revise my maps

Encountering new continents and skies

Just as I was settling in

Something was always welling up
In my limbs and the back

Of my head would start to glow

And I'd be off again to find

The lost people of my origin

How could what was inside me

Not be as various as everything

Around me orphaned as the world

Searching for a friend to find me

And smiling recognize me in himself

Running Valentine

I ran to get my binoculars and book

But there was only your spirit hawk circling 

I ran to get my old photographs

To find you there still smiling

I ran my fingers over your face

To feel the light still lifting

Did I run out on you

Or you on me here drifting

You were always running in

And out of time I ran

To get my arms around you

Hold you up and hold you down

It was like reaching for a hawk

It was like loving in the dark

Kiki's Valentine

Be one who is always reaching for beauty

In whatever form it comes toward you

Let it bless you as you pass by

Pushed on to what she points to

A lost sense of the sacred you pursue

The holy and unholy ugliness

At first of the truth taking off her veils

The simple goodness of a child you felt

Must be there behind everything

The child cowering in the cupboard

The child teaching in the temple

The child you were and are and will be

Let beauty go by you

For only what is good is true

Above All Valentine

Above all I trust the mockingbird

In my pomegranate tree

Will be there when I look up

Or will soon be back

He has his territorial obligations

But comes home to practice his singing

As if he was on his way to Broadway

Or paradise or The Paradise Shack

He has such dedication to the song

My guru and my music master

He rouses me in the middle of the night

For yet another lesson another whack

On the back he whispers grasshopper

Listen you have only have a few days

Before your final audition

Dandelion Valentine

One green dandelion said

Look how I've lost my head

While another opened golden

Rising among the dead

Abandoned in a field

While a war passed by

Their challenge was to die

Neither alarmed nor confused

And launch a myriad of seeds

Into the bullet-ridden sky

Nothing to do with politics

On a sodden sunny day

Green and yellow and gray

I watched an old woman one time

Pluck from them her winter wine

Rain After 111 Days Valentine

We can almost imagine timelessness

No beginning and no end of things

But what of spacelessness 

Within which nothing exists

I make space for you we say

In the timelessness of our lives

Or not we run out of memory

Store the rest in a cloud

Of unknowingness and dust

We know about the three rivers of time

That flow into the ocean of space

But what if there was no space

Not just for light but for darkness

What if we had no father no mother

Possible Valentine

I could drive over there

And walk around the pond 

I could rest in a ramada

And write a new story down

I could watch the children

Playing on the other side

The cyclists whirring past

Dodging dogs a little man

Teaching his daughter how to fish

Or I could draw a few pictures in my mind

Of something that happened to me long ago

Running them forwards and backwards

Until they dissolve into the silence

Of the pond and the stone fly up

Out of the water into my hand

And the whole world unwind

In the Pasture Valentine

They call them horsetail clouds

But they look more like embryos

like fetuses some just being born

They are from the next century

So they gambol and trot about

Imitating their forefathers

Not yet human bodies but gathering

Enough light to live inside one

At night they turn gray and dismal

As ponies far out among stars

Wispy they curl their determination

Into the forms their coming loves will take

To push the world forward further

Steadily turning it inch by inch

After Birth Valentine

When they got back to the old city

Carrying the strange infant in her arms

She was surprised he could speak to her

When no one else was around

In a not quite human voice

In a language he taught her

To understand through stories

That sometimes put her to sleep

He told her to hide the gold for later

and to keep the myrrh for now but to give

The frankincense to whoever was grieving

How he loved to babble on when

She took him to the fields outside of town

About his father and their secret plan

Until sheepishly the stars would gather round

Wondrous Valentine

Nothing I've ever written or said

To which I couldn't make deletions

Corrections or additions in red

Of course I believe in perfection

Or what's the point in striving

But perfection's oversold

It's love that makes me bold

Love of my imperfections

The focus of my distractions

I mine like foolish gold

And you the authorship of my soul

What wondrous love is this

I croak and sing off-tune

Finding you in my ruin

Words Buried in Memory Valentine

It's the bun in abundant

And the tort in distortion

The quest in the question

It's what's hidden in the den

And what was in what's wasted

It's the sea in the seasons

The glint in the eye of the armor

It's the am and the our in amour

What they were in another life 

How many years did they get

To hold their secrets safe

To record their mysteries

Words whose white hair

Of clouds is fading like

Grandfathers and grandmothers

The faith of moths to the flame

Light Clusters Valentine

I have worked the dark mines

Of my lost mind gone down

Into the cold collieries and

Sweating hammered away at

Unyielding rock walls

A whole mountain could be worth

One blue sapphire of thought 

Is it possible someday the whole earth

Will be reduced to a relatively small

Hillside of gems and silver and gold

Come upon in the spring

Transforming into green and flowers

Which brought me to the study of the sun

The stars so-called and the planet beings

The unmined darkness pervading

And almost overwhelming everything

Except for relatively small clusters of light

Apology to Life Valentine

You gave me time and time

And I have not wasted

All of it entirely on myself
I'm not afraid to use the wrong words

If there are no right ones

Take my whole life as an apology

For the error I've become

Except for the erasure you are

What took so long for you to replace me

With yourself was completely my fault

But I'll forgive you for birthing me

If you forgive me for being born

A blurred likeness of what you had in mind

Called to be an image of your kind

From a Farm in Palestine Valentine

Between the two world wars

She traveled to Palestine

To visit the holy and

Unholy places for herself

She and her accompanying angel

Walked from Nazareth to Bethlehem

Holding hands sometimes and camping out

An easy hike of 16 miles

It was Advent and the quiet mood

Of Mary in the last few weeks

Of her pregnancy filled the air

While the fetal Jesus was preparing

To enter the human world after all

She'd been through which was nothing

Compared to what had still to happen

She could feel the sepulcher

Stretching her heart out further she could

Feel the pain of labor coming 

As if she herself were being born

Geographical Valentine

Birth lies due south of death

A matter of a few miles

The road follows the river

Crossing over it once

And then later crossing back

So you get to see both sides

With their different flora and fauna

And if you're walking it

Passing through the little settlements

You can stop to eat for a while

On rock-outcroppings that look out

Over the distance you have come

And the longer distance still to go

It's best to break it into two days 

So you can sleep one night

Under the moonlight and the stars

And wake inspired for the rest

True Valentine

In our struggle to find what's true

Over the last several million years

We have to admit we're still all liars

To some greater or lesser extent

Some of us having given up on the truth

Still see how our lies are founded on it

How we try to make a secret of it

Finding it unbearable and shattering

Rejected by what we most want

Thrown back on our own devices

Our gifts refused souring in our mouth

How many more million years must it take

For us to appreciate our nakedness

And come to love our truth

Nothing's Valentine

You by whom I matter and suffer

I stumble on your altar on the shore

Beauty's grave of stones and wonder

My mind out walking on the waves

Ever unfolding wearing away

What yet remains of my little life

Every day I make it grander

Casting off and grinding down

My nothing into your everything

A jeweler's art a fisherman's eye

I practice fear and symmetry

And all that matters is everyday

I see you walking toward me

And that yes we're slowly merging

Ritual for a Crystal Hour Valentine

On a cold humid morning

Just after sunrise

When icy crystals gather

Covering everything with stars

Winter's first flowers

Melting in an hour

Take off your shoes and socks

And walk out across that fire

Until your teeth chatter

And you're ready to surrender

To becoming winter

A falling body of snow

And the stillness that comes after

Of all that you can know

Alone Valentine

Today we must live suspended

In two opposing worlds slipping

Back and forth over the border

Between the dreamy desert and the open sea

Escaping from one and rejected

By the other alone as trees

And yet collected in a dark forest

Forcing one another from our homes

And yet building a hut on the other side

Uncertain in one and insecure in the other

Never freer never more lost

But who could have constructed

A better scheme for courage alone

To save us from ourselves

Unfound Valentine

Today the archeologists of the soul

Reported the appearance of a pelican

In our winter desert and two black swans

Landing in a northern lake in snow

And then the excavation of a tomb

Of Egyptian priests who must

Have talked to Moses or to Plato

But most mysterious of all

The relic of a buck-toothed toucan

In Bavaria proving similar conditions

In different times and places yield

The same inevitable results but still

They haven't unearthed the soul

That most elusive find of all

Not Just Spring Valentine

It's not enough to call it spring

When it has a thousand other names

Redemption is one and suffering

The glad tulip saddled with snow

The glorious forsythia celebrating

Alone on an empty farm

A testing of souls where a drop

Is weighed and none are found wanting

Rain you could say or a horsey sky

Or a self shivering on stones in the sun

Down by the overflowing stream

I found a drift of bluebells once

And dug them up and took them home

Where they cheerfully bloomed and died

Thanksgiving Valentine

After the great insignia are stored away

The deer heads and ancestral manuscripts

And the furniture is covered by a fog of sheets

The lights turned off and the furnace stilled

And the woods are finally empty for winter 

We drive back through the cities and seasons

Through arriving fall and leaving summer

Who seem to be fading into one

Long rainless spring and come

At last to our own stretch of beach

And the endlessly sounding sea

The first and last real thing in the world

To the shores where we killed our brothers

And thought it was paradise

Getting to Valentine

First the world wants to tell you

Who you are and then you

Get to reply screw that

As if completing someone else's life

Before you get to have your own

A new life full of joyful contradictions

And abrupt departures

The chosen hardships of first loves

Before you get to say screw that

It takes some time not to settle for yourself

To shed your skin and learn to die

Not one but several selected deaths

To suffer daily for something new

Before you get to say screw death

Why Valentine

Why do our limbs grow weak

In the face of the beautiful thing

Our hearts stop and start to break

A sudden sense of guilt

As if caught trespassing

And yet we can't stop staring

Something about it that wants

To possess us as much

As we want to possess it

And yet a tenderness and calm

That makes us feel alive and strong

Though it might do us wrong

Its life is short its love is long

Rising Valentine

The last fish always cruising

Toward the casting of the net

The feet always setting out

Over the stormy water walking

Toward the far shore

Meet here in this island-moment

Just emerging from the waves

Something arriving from above

Something surging up from below

Luminous Venus dark star of the sea

Have you finally come for me

Instant of calm blue-green release

Wind disrobing your veils of light

So I don't know if it's day or night

If you've come to slay or bring me peace

Ritual for Joining the Universe

How long have you been so small

Even wallowing in your insignificance

Estranged to the point of disappearance

Even on your long walks into the woods

Where you find yourself still waiting

For your reflection in water or air

Poor child who has never loved enough

While I who have always loved you

Waited and waited for your return

Whispering to you the fables of remembering

The stump of yourself in that clearing

You were always walking toward

So sit for a minute and rest at last

And let the universe hold you fast

Ritual for Your First Breath Valentine

First try to remember leaping

In your mother's womb

Kicking and screaming

As if buried in a tomb

Not for air but for light

And then falling back to sleep

Gathering your existence together

In the dark passage between

Spirit and earth forgetting

Everything you've ever learned

So you are nothing when you emerge

Completely helpless guiltless brave

Then try to remember your first breath

And however old you are now

Kneel down and kiss the earth

Ritual for the Coming Child

A womb is like a chrysalis hung

For the spirit to liquefy itself inside

Moving backwards out of a cloud

From which the first drops descend

What could be more intimate

Than rain becoming leaves

Curled around a rosy bud

Until the rain becomes a flood

Carrying trees along sweeping up

Debris and the last memory

Of heaven still craving to be

Born again until all that's left

Is the tiny puddle of a being

Reflected in a mother's face

Light candles for its safe arrival

Comb the stars for its rightful names

 

Ritual for a Frightening Night Valentine

If it's a new moon time

And if the wind is howling outside

And you can't pick up another book

But you can feel a blizzard coming

And you're both excited and exhausted

And a fire's hissing in the grate

And all your prayers have gone to bed

Pour yourself a glass of wine

And cut yourself a slice of bread

And when you've fully drunk

And fully eaten listen

For your soul to wake

It too a blizzard and a fire

It too a sacrament of desire

Silent Valentine

There is a certain perfection won

Within a range of possibilities

And yet another perfection

That goes beyond them

 

We play the game perfectly

With the words we're given

But then suddenly new letters announce

A whole other language

 

I've learned a certain compassion

For my shame a perfect sense

Of my imperfections and where

To trespass my trespasses

 

But only words win the game of words

The imperfectly wonderful words

That can only hint and end up

In perfect silence and restraint

Immeasurable Valentine

I am a selfish person

I am an unselfish person

How count the percentages

The losses and the gains

 

I am a selfish lover

I am an unselfish lover

I never want to leave you

I never want to hold you back

 

I want you to tell me who I am

So I can understand you better

I want to withhold myself

And give myself in equal measure

 

I want you to love me

For who you can become

When I'm not here but then

I'm always here for you

Searching Valentine

If I take a little hike

Around my narrow yard

Under my narrow strip of sky

Where will I find you lord

Of the gnomes tucked away

In some dark leafy corner

And where are you sylphs

Caressing my face narrowly escaped

From some old children's story

And the bright sirens of the sun

Assembled in a chorus in the birdbath

Like a fire on a lake

All quietly going about your work

Of creation and destruction

Until the postman comes

Hard Valentine

The hard knowledge

Is that we can come

To appreciate our mistakes

As the only path of learning

That we can come

To understand our sufferings

In our empathy and care

for the sufferings of others

And that out of these

We can grow our courage

To keep on growing stronger

In our capacity to love

The earth its body and its soul

Yes even turn our evils into good

Void Valentine

Void of course

The Libra moon and I

The world stops suddenly

And lets us off

There was something important

We wanted to do

But the day made other plans

And now it will have to wait

Its plan was no plan at all

But to idle in place and stare

At the world in wonder

Listening to a bird call

Or a train pass by and ask

What could possibly happen next

Green Valentine

Among all the extraordinary things

Going on in the world

At any particular moment

There is this grass I seeded

Growing in the waste places

Such a blazing green

It's almost musical

If I take the time to listen

Among all the foolish things

There are to do in the world

Besides all the important things

Hearing the grass speak is one

And on my braver days

Lay myself down like a seed

Ritual for a Cloudless Heart Valentine

Rise before dawn alone

On a given November day

And wrap yourself warm

And walk out into the dark

To catch Venus rising in the east

While Mars is setting in the west

Then burn a strip of birch bark

And the red petal of a rose

Letting the smoke circle around you

Scattering the ashes on the ground

Think of everyone you've ever loved

And everyone who has ever loved you

And speak their names into the rising sun

And know that you are never alone

Longing Valentine

They live within their own longing

The plants and animals and birds

Each with its own specialty and skill

Not needing to see what we see

When we look out at the world

Parts of an immeasurable will

And an original unselfishness

From which we separated ourselves

Each in our own private will

Ruling a selfish world

The wonder is they stay with us

And feel everything we feel

And suffer with us willingly

And long for us to return

Owned Valentine

Every fall the ladderback comes back

To attack the pomegranate tree

But this year the mockingbird

Who owns my yard chased him off

Or was it a flicker I'm never sure

I was surprised the larger bird

Immediately flew off in fear

But the mockingbird was fierce

And though he ignores sparrows and finches

That tree is his favorite perch

And no one else will claim it

However long I wait to hear

The one with fire in his throat

I'm stuck with the same old song

Little Valentine

The little I know about myself

I know enough to pray

Not in the way we are all

Always praying for something

If every wish is a prayer

A prayer is after all a pray-er

Feeling no need to ask for

Anything but just to sit

At a little window on eternity

Where the future prays for the past

And the past blesses the future

Dissolving into a little light

Beyond deception or remorse

Where a greater prayer awaits

 

Ontario Valentine

Way up in cold blue Ontario

Hidden among the lakes and trees

There is a rambling blueberry field

Barren except for granite boulders

Wonderful  to climb up over

A waste space that will never

Get settled except by blueberry

Bushes and some children lusty

Enough to find it out wandering

Or by an old man remembering

To go there on just the right ripening

Day when their scent is in the wind

The blue taste of memory

And the violet wine of forgetfulness

Thread's Valentine

Old age is more embarrassing than adolescence

At least in the middle of hanging by a thread

You suffer some recrudescence

And often the ridiculousness declines

At least you're leaving childhood behind

Not rushing toward it like a cliff

And then they bring you

Your helplessness on a plate

And you devour every morsel

Grinding death calmly

Between your broken teeth

At least that's the treatment goal

Of life the final healer

No Use Valentine

No use preaching

Full of judgments

No use pleading

Full of weeping

No use praying

Unless you never have

Then yes get down

On your knees at least

Just to feel the feeling

And then put some music on

And invent a new dance

Flailing your arms and legs

Like the banshee you seem

Prove you're a person of purpose

Who no longer believes in death

Time's Valentine

The three faces of death

Old age illness a corpse

What he had never imagined

Was the first thing Buddha saw

When he left his father's house

The three faces of evil

After he'd become the Son of God

In the wilderness of his love

Was the first thing Jesus saw

When he left his Father's house

Weren't they both astonished

And humbled at the power of both

They were left speechless at first

And knew this would take some time

All Souls Valentine

The doings and un-doings of my day

The light swelling and the sky lanced

The laundry and the stench quenched

And the whole yard white with rain

And you calling you're still coming

And here you are and already gone

Only with you can I be alone

Because you are you can I be me

The sheets clean and the dishes done

And the day lies down in memory

Such a little day like a child passing

I hardly noticed her pale smile

And dreamed I heard her tell me

All this would only take a while

 

Held Valentine

Sometimes I see our snow-like clouds

Are really the mountain tops of another world

The mirror image of our small earth

 

Mountains of a blue that blends

Into our connecting sky

Unseen river valleys at their base

 

But all magnified into endless space

The way our seas go out

And then go further out

 

And that to us reflected world

Shrinks to the first bud on a tree

Under a silent rainfall of stars

 

Just like ours but vaster fuller

Until I lose the sense of great or small

Reaching out to hold it all

Whoever Valentine

In Burgos once the young Cistercian nuns

Sang down the stones to ruins we visit now

Their imagined lives still under construction

 

And the hills around Burgos

They grow sturdier the more

You look back over their shoulders

 

While the fields once around Burgos

Where I have never been

Still hold our footprints

 

How is this Burgos even possible

Unless we spend the past

Going back over the future

 

If memory serves in Burgos once

We had our first rendezvous

Whoever you are dear reader

A Bust Called 'Idea' Valentine

I parked my pedestal in the garage

And placed my head outside on a table

The one called 'Idea' ready to live

With the face of an angel

 

So this is what it feels like to have wings

Coming out of the sides of your head

And to be innocent of all self-interest

A messenger of the wind and the dead

 

To have a tongue of stone

At one with the great 'Idea'

Of a heart in its early stages

Before the blood arrives

 

But someone had to be there

It was you wasn't it waiting

Alone and eager to fly

Watching your life pass by

 

 

 

Could You Valentine

Into this narrow strip of time

Where the light pours calmly down

Between the highest mountains

And the bottom of the seas

Eight miles up and eight miles down

The distance it takes to get to town

And return with some living done

Something for supper and eager sleep

But could you run that far for love

Sixteen miles from the roof to the floor

If your life depended on it

And launch out higher deeper

Past the boundary of the stars

And moon-like sink the seas

Just A Question Valentine

Do you think Lord

If I run a straight line

From the sun to Saturn

From your heart to mine

And then up to Venus

From my lips to yours

Like the slash of a sword

Or the lift of a bird

Over to Jupiter it would climb

Beyond the hazy reach of time

Would our bodies intertwine

Would I taste the bread and wine

And reach the shores of Mercury

To find you waiting impatiently

Dispassionate Valentine

When I dismantled your tortured body

Starting with the veins of contradiction

That tangled through your brain

I came upon a nest empty as a heart

So finely made it crumpled in my hand

When I tried to pull it out

A desiccated mess I made of you

But kept on cutting off your arms 

Avoiding the blind eyes of buds

To get to where your life had stopped

And might yet come again

What was your intention

But to get to some intent

To suffer through to flowering

And dying rest content

Sent Valentine

One of those folding doors of time

That comes down with a cosmic crash

Scaring the cats and the doves fly off

Sealing all of death's possessions inside

All it could never live without

 

One of those great black clouds

Hovering above the sunset lake

Which suddenly rushes toward

And completely devours your heart

In a single spine-tingling gulp

 

One of those huge asylums of love

To which you've been sent to scrub

Your tears from the worn-out floors

And walk with the sleepless moon

The empty halls of the stars

Grander Valentine

This must be the 299th death and life

I'm facing slowly aren't we all

We old souls we've learned to smile

When we hear the sleigh bells toll

We've seen life is final more

Infinite and grander than nature

Which is a sluggish imitation

And the highest form of honor

And recognize the family resemblance

In the stupid arguments we have

If not quarrelsome then how contrite

We've seen love is temporary

Delicate and full of light

And we have learned to love to fight

God's Play Valentine

If you jumble all the myths together

And Lear appears at Parsifal's table

And the Queen of Sheba flounces in

With St. Francis on her arm

 

And Achilles and Nietzsche

Get lost in a game of chess

And Dante starts to get preachy

And Mary straightens her dress

 

You'll know the carnival of heaven

Has come to your town again

To dissolve the world in chaos

And absolve it of its sins

 

And once again you face

The beasts who bar your way

Take off the masks of gods

And learn again to play

Windy Valentine

My Tibetan prayer flags

Look like sad burnt rags

After this summer's heat

Not an Amen left to repeat

 

We laugh together at them

Until we turn and see

The distant hills still blazing

With a holocaust of trees

 

A mourning dove lands on the roof

And then immediately flies off

Will she be back when the flood returns

And we have not eaten for days

 

Is the wind itself the only prayer left

For us to say who drives the fire

And the flood to bless

Or curse us as it may

Lizard's Valentine

But what possesses

The shady cat

To hide out under

The drowsy bush

 

When we both know perfectly well

She's hunting for lizards

Where she caught one

There last night

 

Her weapons are stealth

And an infinite patience

In that she's like a god

 

And god-like in her claw

And she could maul you easily

And then forget about it all

Lie Down With Me Valentine

The spirit must precede the body

Not just accompany it out

The long years of preparation

Building those paper ships

And then pushing them out

Into the cosmic current

To become somebody else

How many times discovering

The same continent over again

But the spirit must build its tent

Camp after so many perilous hikes

It must build a little fire from inside itself

If it would warm the infinite cold

 

Father's Valentine

The father thought

It was his son

Who woke his heart

Who broke his heart

By leaving him

 

The father thought

His son too friendly

With the wrong sort

Who would only drag him down

To the world that drug

 

But he was still completely

Willing to lose him

And to be lost to him completely

 

He always trusted him implicitly

And believed he would return

Prodigal Valentine

I lean too much on you my father

But is it as much as you on me

It's just you're always there

Sometimes I need some space alone

Which of course you always provide

And which I spend missing you

My time wastes by eternally

What for you is merely a few seconds

You said you'd wait for me at the corner

While I exorcized my demons

You promised I could have

As many lifetimes as I needed

Finally you abandoned me altogether

Made me my own father and mother

Was it so I could feel like

What it feels like being you

When Life Valentine

When life slips out of the body

And it can't get back in

But is pushed out into the general

Background life of things

Then life being life

Can't not but go on

In search of yet another form

Better than the last one

Death's heavy curtain

Opens on a further scene

A bustling city square

Or a forest in Arden

Where life is love must be

The body's only a summary

A blueprint for new stars

The Three Loves Valentine

There is thought-out love first

And then the love that is nothing but feelings

And then there are all the things

Love actually gets done in a day

 

Even when the thought of love

Whatever you make of it

Is all you think about each night

 

The thought toward which all

The others inevitably fall

 

And even if what you feel

Is the tenderest joy

It's possible to feel

 

Still only the third one matters

Which is the love of the other two

 

The quarrelsome and lonely loves

Who don't know what to do

If For You Valentine

I think there is nothing

In the world more beautiful

Than the faces of children

 

All children all their faces

Before it dawns on them

The world's darker parts

 

Even when shattered

They are more beautiful

Than all the world's pictures

 

If for you beauty is still holy

And alive and you are old enough

To have lived to see it

Unnatural Valentine

Did you just see that yellow leaf

Hop down to the ground while

All the others fell or are falling

But that one clearly leapt

Upward at first casting itself

Out as if to catch the wind

Not merely succumbing to it

But working it to its purpose

To land at a greater distance

From the branch that had

Already lifted it as far as it

Could go its direction was the sun

But the ground still wanted it to fall

New Moon in My Sign Valentine

I've visited heaven many times

The Lord has often been my guest

Such as I on earth can know him

But he keeps his visits brief

And often we sit in awkward silence

Listening to the movements

The bird voices of the world

Me trying to think of a question

Him shining his Buddhist grin

Always arriving at leaving

I can't take too much of heaven

And he can't not take the whole earth

He says one day

He'll come to stay

 

You Know Valentine

You know how memory works

In family groups and curious

Hard-won associative patterns

 

The truth is we have to run the world

And throw it away at the same time

Sensing the onward flow the moon

Behind its iron scrim

 

But there are those who want

To stay behind and the question is

Who will go back to fetch them

 

The dead are our children

We suddenly realize

One day walking along

 

We find a further life in them

If we take them seriously

If we trust them as friends

Passion Vine Valentine

Will you dear angel

Remind me of the name

Of that vine over there

 

I forget what year

I stood it in its hole

And pruned and watered it

 

And waited for it to cling

Like a body to its bones

To make the trellis ring

 

And now you're dying

And I've forgotten your name

Numberless leaves I have known

 

But now I take from memory

Whatever it provides

Vast in its elisions

Balanced Valentine

The plants are surely breathing us

As we are steadily breathing them

You'd think we'd get better and better

 

But the carbon keeps building up

And we struggle to hold the balance

Between in-breath and out

 

It takes a whole year

For a tree's single breath

So secure is its faith in life

 

Its dying is almost more beautiful

Than its being born

And there are those among them

 

Who never lose their leaves

But go on breathing the light

As death whispers past

 

Mixed Valentine

I don't want tacos

I don't know what I want

So we end up with tacos

 

And because fall here

Is like spring there

After a blistering summer

We can't wait to turn

 

The garden and start it up again

But it's a strange fall here

A mixture of dying and sprouting

 

So even when you find out

What you want it's only

The wanting that survives

 

And a settling for winter roses

 

Right Valentine

Sometimes to do the right thing

To get up and walk away

Has nothing to do with love

 

Even if it turns out badly

It's like the thousand tiny seeds

Of a particular orchid

Drifting on the wind

 

In hopes a tiny few

Will happen on the right

Subject and you'll know

When it's selected you

 

For a trial run to see

How far you can take it

And to find out for sure

 

It's the only mistake

You didn't make

Argument with My Angel Valentine

Yes holding on to the devil's hand

I am often for the ride

Of my life but I hate

The Ferris wheel and

He always wants to scream

Over and over again

In the haunted house

Of my heart until

I slouch him home

We avoid the parade of fools

Already spoken for he has

His teeth in me a man alone

And argues back the more

I tell him to be calm

Don't Worry Valentine

I will not forget you angel

Together we will still go

For walks and I will rub

Your feet and you will scratch

My back and we will sleep

Torn together by each other's

Dreams and snores and caresses

And we will finally get married

Me for the third you for the first time

Me to my first true mind

Though you loved me first

Even before I was born

You recognized my face

Third times a charm

Sometimes Valentine

Sometimes at night my angel

Comes from behind and faces me

Refusing to be ignored anymore

I ask her how she's doing

As she gives me an icy stare

Not knowing whether to laugh or cry

It's just I say the light gets so bright

And sometimes the darkness so deep

I totally forget you're there

I reach out to touch her hair

She has such lovely hair

I want to comfort her and tell her

Not to worry I won't forget her

As long as she is there

Half a Valentine

Half of the world is hidden from us

Half of life goes on without us

But who knew about the other half of seeing

Buried alive in us long ago

In my mind its hand reaches up

Out of the grave of my heart

And slowly its body rises

Into a sapling or a flower

That only lives for a day

Turns out the eternal is evanescent

Grasped it escapes into the night

Where dreaming pursues it

But I am left with only broken pieces

Of the other half of sight

 

God's Glory Valentine

In the unredacted version of my life

I start at the end of the last page

Proofing it backwards taking out

Or putting in the commas

Stretching out the personal pictures

With the objective unseen half

Of what was really going on

But often I stop at a particular page

Breaking down and can't continue

That quiet day you were born

Isn't God's greatest glory

That he had a child to love

Who could give birth to him

Who could bring his heart to life

The Better Part Vlanetine

The part of me

That gets things done

Isn't speaking to the part

That gets next to nothing done

What one calls indolent and lazy

The other calls contemplative and hazy

One prattles on about the dishes and the meals

While the other wonders what God feels

They both think they're both lost

Which is when they need you most

You silent one exhausted smiling

From talking and playing with the children

Come rest with us in the stillness

And give us our forgiveness

Up Valentine

Up all night

Partying on the roof

Now you sleep it off

Curled on the patio floor

Naked as the cat you are

Merely a visitor

From another world

You kept me waking

To the loud music

Of joy you called it

Too young for that word

Your body still sleek

And perfect as a bird

Your heart still strong and meek

 

Fake Valentine

Death seduces us with autumn's beauty

The mood of many loves ending

Mixed with so many just beginning

The way the fog lingers into afternoon

When we can't stop crying

Sitting among the quaking aspens

Until the sunlight rushes in

Searching as if it had forgotten something

A mother her own lost child

Or the will to live itself a body

Laying down covered with leaves

No leaf a breeze won't take

But death is such a fake

Plodding/Rushing Time Valentine

Such an accumulated debt

Of fear and greed and hate

Could only be repaid

When a new understanding prevails

When we forgive You Lord

As you have forgiven us

According to the old prayers

I still say from childhood

That childhood come again

This is simple mathematics

For which a new pair of ears

Has first to be carved out

To let the music enter us

Waking to Dream Valentine

Some high being hides in my hibiscus bush

I come to sit at her feet

Mornings after confusing dreams

To ask her what they meant

Her dreams are clear pointed leaves

Dead or green or yellow

She uses to enfold herself

In an unambiguous glow

Dying together with growing

Suffering into speechless bloom

Until she herself becomes a dream

Drawn up from the dark earth

We tremble when the sunlight

Fills her branches with birds

St. Michael in the Americas

In the childhood pictures we brought over

From the old countries of the mind

He carries the chains in one hand

From which he freed himself

And in the other a flaming sword

Brandished above a dragon's head

We saw him as a picture of our plight

And dressed ourselves as soldier-angels

And roared through our monster teeth

And led the dragon on a leash

Or fell dead on the bloody ground

We knew we were just playing around

Until he brushed us with his wings

Michaelmas Valentine

Today we welcome the clever finches

Who make it back in the fall

Having learned to sing Your names

Into the quiet corners of the yard

They know how to scratch them out

In words made of twigs and chirps

And whatever seeds are hiding

Like when You bent down

And left Your imprint on the ground

And then assumed a branch

And sang Your blood away

Some of it must have dripped

On the finches that imperial day

I pray that it also falls on us

Lasting Valentine

Waiting in the little hallway

Between summer and fall

In that shady corridor of days

Drowsy from summer's dream

Watching it all fall apart

Each leaf so precisely placed

Not a murmur touching down

Here it is again the end of everything

The last days grouped around the grave

With nothing more to say

Death lands on a perfect day

Not too cold or hot

Not too dark or light

No matter to me if it comes or not

To My Brother on My Birthday Valentine

My one brother talks a lot 

But everything he says is important

Stuff about nothing in particular

News from the nodal point of anger

Which we both know is disguised fear

Which he doesn't know we share

But I can't stop the onward flow

Of his words roaring over rapids

Even when it comes to the slow pond

And the tall grasses of his despair

I listen even more deeply

To the silence as we float

Out over the depths of I love you

We both know is meant

Life's Valentine

If every single form of life

Is a soul-building enterprise

If suddenly small purple flowers

Show up on the red-blooming hibiscus

Everything has to be re-imagined

About how everything works

A default to the empty mind

In which everything's dissolved

Into the darkness of God again

And whatever we've left him

To reassemble from all of life

Into a new cosmos be sacrificed

That the great Teachers of Flowers

And the Masters of the Wind

Be sent forth again

Christ at Zuma Valentine

When you're not in diapers anymore

Feeling the rush of your own first steps

When you're not napping in kindergarten

Like a seed at the bottom of the world

When you're not suffering the ninth year drought

When you're not moronic fifteen zut

When you can never get enough traveling

When you can never get enough holding

When you're not in Zurich or with child

When you're just not feeling it anymore

But still in love with the world 

When you're not able to walk or speak

When you've not forgotten me anymore

But when you're good and ready come

I'll be waiting at Zuma's shore

Is It Fall Yet Valentine

Two dead Ficus leaves

Circle on the patio breeze

Rushing after one another

Then they stop and stare

What do you want

Each asks the other

I asked you first

They both repeat

Is it possible they're lovers

And the wind that's abandoned them

Their old quickening and fire

Following one another into the flames

That have turned them faded bronze

Frankly they look like earrings

Only an archaic queen would own

Banked On Valentine

In the first rough half of life

We pay off our last life's debts

So in the second half we're free

To accumulate new debts

These debts add up to death

Who just takes out a second mortgage

And installs new doors and windows

Still the house looks like a husk

In which a hard seed rattles

Like the last breeze in a throat

But finally the economy is such

We become the air and lake

All these debts have made us rich

This wealth in turn we re-invest

Secret Valentine

Even more secretive than the future

The always-unraveling one

Who cannot keep a secret

Always whispering to the past

Finding a fresh wardrobe for

The skeleton of every fact

The same act over and over

With a whole new cast

As if it were holding out on us

The future forecast in the past

The premotion in the deja-vu

The abiding presence there

We struggle to identify

As you and I and You

 

Dear I Valentine

Dear I at times too dear

At once the lowest and the highest word

Not God but my I I fear

Not the one that he conferred

Two I's that meet in a third

A little clearing in the woods

Where I find a stump and sit

And spy a trinity of birches

Dripping candling the sky

Perfect place for an I to die

Eyes left open to the light

One I that rescues the other I

The one that can never die

Flame that comprehends the night

Mistaken Valentine

Switching legs I kicked the cat

I didn't mean to I take it back

No one was hurt but a nasty look

Pursued by a hasty retreat

What's up with inadvertent things

Mean when we didn't mean to

Something in me forgot

Her sleeping on my foot

How could I suddenly not

Be stirred awake by your words

Falling and disappearing

Leaves down the page

Beseeching me to relinquish

My mistaken rage

 

One Valentine

I know you find me incomplete

A disaster at times a freak

My will flaccid my talent weak

You won't find the moon at my feet

Or a crown of stars on my head

You'll find me scouring the streets

Of floundering cities and empty creeks

Searching for you among the dead

Trusting implicitly you're the one

I will become despite myself

Because I saw you once alive

Wrapped in the rising sun

The whole reason I still survive

My one and lonely one

Joan's Valentine

Let us keep this safely between us

Holding on tightly to our pain

While only our voices remain

To echo that distant name

Though you can't return

Lost summer of green veins

A stray wind rattles your leaves

Giving up on us entirely

On our hands and knees

We comb the grass for seeds

Look I've found one gnarled

Nasturtium husk to save

No worries all our lives

Curled in it bound for spring

Getting On Valentine

I knocked cautiously

On an archangel's door

With my questions in my hand

Getting on with my life

But still standing there

If he was not at home

He would be coming later

If he was not to be disturbed

I would water the plants

Or go for a walk with a friend

All my questions could wait

Though they burned my hands off

I knew they wouldn't matter much

When I felt his touch

Honey Valentine

If every word in the world requires

Another word to explain it

We will never get done with talking

If every sound in the world requires

A symphony to express its longing

We will never get done with singing

The simple phrase I love you

To everyone in the world

It's entirely unexplainable

A jolt that takes us to a holy place

For a few seconds or a lifetime

Where the words take off their clothes

And expose their true raiment

Honey-colored in the silence

Magnificent Valentine

Isn't it magnificent

Darkness is first

Among created things

When the heights

And the depths had not

Been plundered yet

And the god was still sleeping

Dreaming of his darkness

Rolling over in the bed

To see his son come back

How many eons had he waited

Often looking out the window

Sensing the directions he was taking

The light in the darkness of his life

 

Voyaging Valentine

We find the word 'Frei'

In metal above the gate to hell

We finger fragments from the walls

Of Ephesus and Troy

We steal a flower from a grave

At Chartres and find a penny

With the face of a dead queen

On the floor of a ruined monastery

We stand under a holly tree

And have our smiles memorialized

We eat breakfast on a balcony

Above a sea of olive trees

We sit on the thrones of initiates

And get lost in the alleys of Delphi

Then fly home silently

Saving Valentine

The Messengers of the Beginning

Weren't dragged down into the mud

They went there freely

They sent the Sons and Daughters

Of Twilight to make things difficult

Their lightening of desire

Did they want everyone to be a Job

They lit everything on fire

O Man save yourself they said

From the world you created

We are the Thunders of the Sun

What more could be given

We lent you Our Rising One

Whose work is never done

 

Built Valentine

Someone is pounding something

I hear it faintly down the street

Twenty-six regular beats

Then a pause then thirty more

Another pause then I lose count

What can they be building there

A mathematics almost music

I remember from biology

The beat is there in the blood

Before it builds the heart

A bird comes first

And then the nest

Whatever it was it's finished

Just need to get it varnished

Constant Valentine

The constant struggle of the mind

To get past like and hate

Every mind everywhere at once

Knowing some won't make it I

Imagine death must strenghten us

Or what's the plot of the point

Of having come this far

Into a fairy-tale of riddles

If we can't come to the last page

Awake with wonder pleading

It all be read again

Please one more time

Re-writing the ending

But starting from the beginning

Living Valentine

I was still living here the day

The summer started to fall apart

Not a complete surrender

But a suspension in the air

It was taken out and shot

There is blood everywhere

And more to come I guess

If the sky is any measure

Sometimes I rush out

Into the street to see the sun

Pass through the cities of the west

And into the seventh heaven

That sea without a surface

Where the darkness starts to glow again

Another Dreamed Valentine

If we could have coffee alfresco
One more time you pick
The place I could tell you
About my dream last night
I walked in on you sleeping
Covered and wearing a thick
Dark blue bonnet with holes
For your ears I smiled
And wondered why your ears
Were left to freeze
But later awake I realized
It was so you could go on listening
Even in your death's deep sleep
And from that other world could dream
Everything that's happening here

Don't Valentine

Don't get stuck in the beauty
Though you must pass through
Its rot to see what
It's really all about
Some reckoning must already
Be at work to seize
The beauty we call ugly
Which is always a surprise
Sanguine spring and melancholy fall
Got married in a summer blaze
A winter pregnancy miscarried
In a March's rainy haze
It all depends if the final seed
Sprouts in the puddle of your days

Approaching Valentine

The lost traditions of birds and trees
Their festivals and sainted feasts conclude
And all is hanging wonder in the woods
But in my town a melancholy mood
Everything seems once removed
Like a distant relative approaching
With news of dead cousins and aunts
One wants to crack a joke but can't
Remember one to save one's life
But it's just death again coming in glory
When the wheels of the truck come off
And the hulk of it sits rusting in the yard
Plastered like you with red and yellow leaves
And you know you're going nowhere at last

Wanted Valentine

I wanted to speak of my laziness
But I keep putting it off
I wanted to show you my patience
But I keep going off
Is it just like you to keep saying
What I really don't want to hear
I wanted to remember you
When you are right in front of me
I wanted you to know our names
That can't be said
I wanted to write about my craziness
And assure you it's caged and content
Now all my hallucinations are of you
Or God or the faces of our dead

Noon Moon Valentine

Because the light is outnumbered by the darkness
It must be more strategic more inventive
More consciously and thoroughly thought out
Every day its brilliant structures
Must be re-imagined piece by piece
And the sense of something never seen before
Installed in all the insignificant places
The powerful shadows work to blur
Even that little ghost moon we spy at noon
Like a sail lost in the blue
Must be struggled for and held
By a light so fragile and gentle
That when it lifts above the bay
We feel there is nothing left to say

Lullaby for My Illusions Valentine

Sleep my sweet illusions
Rest your heavy heads
Dream to your conclusions
Now the story's read

Did the plot consume you
How easily you were led
To find the weeping woman
And her young lover dead

Did you finally figure out
Which of her tears were real
Did you stagger about
Struggling not to feel

His body lay there on her lap
Within the silence of the trees
And in her heart a thunderclap
That brought you to your knees

Irreligious Valentine

If most cats are faithful Buddhists
And most dogs pious Protestants
Most frogs must be Zen Masters
Whose entrails predict disasters

But the Seventh Day Adventist crows
Promise they know what no one knows
And tell it to the Catholic cows
Where the Muslim grasses grow

In holy atheist days gone by
Clouds called a council in the sky
Of all beliefs facts long divisions
Around the idea we must die

Finally a Monarch wrote their creed
And handed morals out like seed
And on the tongue of every clod
Placed a tiny crumb of God

Autumnal Valentine

For for for
Against against against
Is there only more
Argument and angst

I tried to appeal to my neighbor
But my neighbor pulled a gun
The bullets in the chamber
Said listening was done

I retreated to my garden
And sat among the weeds
And watched their flowers harden
Into a hurricane of seeds

But even within their silence
I could hear the ringing of a bell
Clearing a path to heaven
And a highway to hell

Small Valentine

Some poets are small
Children who want to
Eat everything they see
Swallowing their becoming
They long to put their hands
On their first touching
And love uncritically
Holding on tightly to a finger
Or a breast where they can rest
From all their wailing and staring
Totally at the mercy of the gods
Who tend and wipe their asses
And coddle them and dress
Them in their cutest clothes
And send them out to where who knows

Still Waiting Valentine

Last night I waited for the rain
But no rain came
Only the wind to blame
For the forests still in flame

I waited for my mother
To leave my father
But finally couldn't bother
And went my own way

I waited for your train
It hurried in on time
But no you on it
As it scurried out of sight

I waited for my body to die
I was as patient as a sky
That's never known a kite
I dreamed I was a boy last night

Marina's Valentine #2

In a time of great hunger and danger
I can vividly hardly imagine
She wrote poems about buses
And swans and loved the rich
But mostly she sang like a nightingale
The loneliest songs of praise
With great pitch and valor
Until she took love too far
And it dragged her down 
Just so she could watch
Every motion of its unfolding
Forsaking even heaven
Just to live enough
To write it all down

Marina's Valentine

The end of August everywhere
And yet so many different Augusts
Too early for purple asters here
And too late for cascading stars
I think of her crossing Nevsky Prospect
In the fifth month of her pregnancy
With the daughter who would die
Of hunger before that permanently
Wary gaze had settled in her eyes
I think of her fastened to the earth
And still pacing Nevsky Prospect
A little August Russian doll
Waving her frightening poems
Sticking to her promise
To bring down those pretty domes

Beach Valentine

You call from the beach far away
Where it's sunny and breezy
With news of your world
At last the garage door is getting
Fixed and the holes in the wall
Filled in the annual invasion
Of summer ants is out of control
Your friend's father had to be hospitalized
With a painful infection your cousin's
Neighbor woke up with a gun to his head
Yes I'm fine today my big news is
I did the dishes and watered the plants
And slowly while I was listening
I lay down on the sand beside you
And held you lovely in my arms

Distracted Valentine

When enough of us can admit
How ineffective and over-rated
Anger really is how far fear
Deadens thinking hardens
Feelings when enough
Of us admit how vulnerable
We are at every stage
Of our existence how easily
Soft and gullible we learn
Too late how we were lied to
How we let ourselves be lied to
When it was our own selves
Duped into foolish anger
Distracting us from our work

Past the Time Valentine

Is the grass greener under the battlement
The water swifter under the bridge
The lightening fiercer in the city
The thunder louder in the field
Is there now an inescapable control
Between the world as echo
Of collective human voices
Raised to the pitch of a hurricane
In terror and in want
And the next storm that breaks
Over the backyards downing houses
As if this violence wasn't very convenient
And could still be pinned on something else
Willed ignorance or blind expedience

Love Is Fear Inverted Valentine

When she's very afraid
She runs and hides
The garbage truck or cleaner
Coming down the street
Loud grinding noises
From some Godzilla
Out to eat her
As if the world
Could be that simple
But even she knows
That's not the case
One day she went out to meet it
Crushed to find
It could easily be defeated

Funeral Valentine

We have only three crosses
To hang on: science art or holiness
Or what was your intention
In coming here if not to ask
What you are doing here
Your motive behind it
What were you going for
Trying to undermine death
By numbering it or painting it
Or adoring it this great big
Lumbering thing death it must really
Be put away with finally
If we're to make much progress