Unwritten Valentine

I can't write stories because
You have to know the ending
Before you even begin
While poems can lose all perspective
And I can identify with that
Trust they place in the abandonment
Of even temporary conclusions
Which elicit then refuse the facts
They try not to rely on too much
Stories show us how we behave
Under a certain circumstance
But poems are not that blithe
About their prospects for experience
And know their time is brief

What Has the Power Valentine

Wealth and poverty
Are not material problems
Matter has no life of its own
Its whole motif is resurrection
Where it makes itself known
As the evolution of ascension
Where it becomes momentarily visible
Victorious as a leaf in flower
Or a thought in the form
Of a movement in the heart
A deeper listening hears
To say what matters
What has consequence and heft
The cogency and power
Life itself assumes

Leaving Off Valentine

Death's magic act is the pure art
Of disappearing like the coin
Behind the ear drawn back
To a final smile a trick
That leaves us wondering
How it's done what only
The body can do coming
And going in a flash of light
We've lost the eyes to see
There's no Beyond
It's all right here
And we just pick
It up again
Where we left off

Impossible Valentine

For a long time will was the only thing
Until love slipped in as the first feeling
Which did and didn't last
So then a head was cast
To ponder and reflect the fact
Maybe the world is God's real soul
Since otherwise he doesn't have one
Being pure Being and all
But maybe he needed the world
And the whole cosmos for that matter
Even more than the world
Needed him poor thing
How lonely and impossible
He must have been

Freely Rendered Valentine

A will that wants to understand
A thinking that becomes a seeking
Below a fiery purple sea
Above a cold clearing sky
Warmth rising into light falling
And in between an airy dream
Driving a small boat forward
From east to west like
A close-hauled heart
Skimming above the waves
Where time melts into space
Where suddenly a door is opened
I can see it even from the shore
Where together we stand and gape

Since My Last Confession Valentine

Is my life all wrong
Have I screwed it up
Made a mess of things
Have I cruised blissfully past
What forgiveness was waiting
Blaming you for my problems
Punishing you for my faults
And lied thirty times for no
Apparent reason have I not
Been subject to demons
Twelve times and thrown
Back into the molten sea
Of my own gasping conscience
Catching a glimpse as I melted
Of the terrible truth

Fanfare Valentine

Three notes the crow called
Three notes three times
I went to see it ominous but
It was hiding on the roof
Of my neighbor and so
Not meant for me I hoped
Its croaked fanfare of death
But would I wish it
On my friend the crow
Just the messenger Gabriel
Bringing the invitation
For which I am not ready
Not at all worthy today
But then it flew away

One Word Valentine

What I can do cannot undo
What I have said I've said
The strange heaven of words
In the archives of the dead
Where all words go to be undone
Re-alphabetized re-strung
Until a better Mozart come
To hymn new languages
From the grunts and howls
Of our old ways of saying things
An even more enchanting flute
Played by a stuttering fool
Who sings the words we can't
Take back and the ones
We never want to lose

Seen Valentine

I feel the dead can see me
More clearly than I see myself
I count on them to tell me
Stories about myself I struggle
To recall things like our first
Meetings and mad adventures
The different paths we took
And when we will be together
Though we're never far apart
Grateful they never judge me
Though they see how it is
To live in a homeless world
With an ever-breaking heart

Poured Valentine

Because whatever evil wants looks good
It makes it easy for us
But harder on us to learn
Without sampling both
Each with its pleasures
But I want something further
A water just becoming wine
The original vintage of love
To sip it and pour
The rest on the ground
It makes a splashing sound
Puddles up seeping in
Seeking the roots of trees
On such a day as this

When Valentine

What heaven feared
When the sun was first
Rehearsing the earth
That something not so good
Would have to be included
The necessity of failure
For love to have a future
Worthy of its fate
Then heaven wept
To lose its only light
That first dark night
When the moon slipped
Out of its side and the stars
Fell carefully after

Red Valentine

Does Easter get redder 
Every year until it blooms
A flaming crimson
Just when you think the blood
Has passed into the earth
It comes back redder
In my hibiscus
So I can put my hands
Around it but my mind
Only falters at the door
Of understanding redness
That heart's firm beating
From which all
The other colors flow

Perhaps Valentine

We've got to stop meeting like this
At the abyss of friendship
And just plunge right in
And trust our angels
If not ourselves let them
Suggest things miraculous
And try to keep an open mind
As they go on about the glories
Of being without a body
I mean that doesn't sound practical
Or something that would happen
In real life I mean the idea of
An angel is already
A step too far perhaps

The Fritillary Returns to the Passion Vine Valentine

So thin a slice of life
But just enough to slip
Between sunlight and matter
Which takes two wings apparently
To float along between two worlds
Equally at home in either
I could see one up close
Enough to question the source
Of the five gold dots
In the corners of both wings
The insignia of the one he serves
Resting on a leaf for light
But what god uses this for a body
And what could he impossibly
Have in mind with us

Easter Blues Valentine

After three weeks
The tomb of my room
Starts to reek
So I take a switch
To it and beat it
Back to neatness
This regimen creates
A certain rhythm
In which I'm either
Falling apart or
Just getting it together
I rearrange my empty space
I try again to wash my face

Already Valentine

From what I have at hand
Four white whales in a blue sky
From what comes to mind
One flow following another
The science of details
The art of the whole
But mostly the quiet green
Urgency of love
Struggling to break through
My dead thoughts
The knowledge I'm already there
Beyond myth or Maya
Just sitting here

Still Valentine

Every morning I make
The sign of a heart
With my hands and hold it
Up to the world
The pantomime of a lover
Trying to apologize
For so many other futile gestures
I try to be still and let you speak
Of things I don't remember
The remnants of a dream
That brought you into being
How you started out ancient
In a burst of light
Growing backwards to your birth
Still far off in the future

Noli Tangere Valentine

Out of the vast tenderness of nature
We have carved a hardened world
Which spring only struggles to dissolve
What do you think those petaled trees
Are really up to those yellows
And purples of a risen people
Who practice what they preach
It's not that they're ephemeral discrete
The crocus with his dignity intact
The serene assertive jonquil blurred
In passing on the way to the beach
Or the tomb of some memory
It's that wherever we go
Their example accompanies us

Bread and Wine Valentine

It's clear the body is a sieve
Of light and matter an experiment
Holding the most hope
For an antidote a cure
Already taking effect
On some future soul
Of the earth it's clear
The body is a trap
A block of awe and blood
And we have only a little
Time to build it
Our secret hut
And then dismantle it
And watch it drift away

On the Road to Emmaeus Valentine

If the adults in the room
Can't take care of the infirm
And are overwhelmed
By their own frantic children
They've left behind
To attend to the dying and the dead
We must really have lost our minds
Some time ago lost the thread
Of the little family we all are
The palpable sense of the essential
Idea of our togetherness in this
As from the beginning have we
Forgotten it extends
All the way to the end

Easter Valentine

Hope always arrives before
If it comes at all
Who needs it once you're there
Like the body itself it melts
Into thin air and rises
Through angel orders
Into the imagination of God
It's this or nothing
Or our faith always
Arriving late is wasted
If not on ourselves
Than on something better
My preaching is a choir
Singing to itself
Awaiting your arrival

Holy Saturday Valentine

A slow wind wandered all night
Cold down the empty roads
And yet the stillness of it all
When I got up and looked
Pulled me out into the yard
As if the world had just died
Leaving me a ghost among ghosts
And yet I never felt more alive
I seemed to be dissolving slowly
Into everything around me
I had never loved the earth so much
That I actually wanted to become it
That I wanted to plunge down into it
And rescue its molten core

Good Friday Valentine

Once one thing occurred
That changed the world
We're still grasping
Gasping and gasping
Trying the most terrible death
To prove love is the only
Open door and death
Simply opens it more
The truly foolish
Remember him as poor
Gasping and gasping
From the moment he was born
To the time he was lost
In the clouds

Practicing Valentine

I started my conducting classes          
Under a mockingbird no Bach
But a stern insistence on pitch
And abrupt modulations
Which ignored my instructions
The careful tempi I'd worked out
For the wind and string sections
But he was composing on the spot
Midway breaking my flying baton
I had no idea of what he wailed
Real music was or could be
I'd lost all sense of harmony
Yet patiently he'd return
And we'd resume our scales

Maundy Thursday Valentine

I own the early morning
But by evening I'm a mess
And if as now the moon is full
My soul that wolf begins to howl
My mouth fills up with flies
I know he's coming for me
I know there will be blood
But we've a few surprises in store
Morning and I for you dear terror
Which you forgot putting the world together
Me and morning with our light and ease
Our way of doing what might please
The lord our sun there is no way
You could have won

Wednesday of Holy Week Valentine

What I remember
Of what I'm becoming
Is all I'm aware of
Right now time
Is so stupendous
If I let it take me
Far upstream or out to sea
Or stranded on some shore
Which brings me to you
That there's another beginning
To put an end to my ends
And start me up again
If I can only think my way
Into your presence where time
Is not permitted
To hold sway

Full Moon in Libra Valentine

I am an honest and an evil man
Who since has learned to think
That sooner or later his honesty
Must prevail and evil
Being thoughtless fail
To grasp the meaning of the word
I am a good and thieving man
Who since has learned to feel
The ruin of self-betrayal
Was his greatest sin
I am a sick and sunlit man
Who since has learned to do
The thing he wouldn't
But for you

Tuesday of Holy Week Valentine

There was a wide tilled field
With a small belly at the center
Like a woman waiting for her child
Stretched out in her furrows
We'd come back to our past
Greeted smiling by an old friend
Who had since become an angel
She looked so good in white
She brought us some bread just baked
I was supposed to give a little talk
About making the first garden back then
Which actually I'd never planted
We sat sipping a cold white wine
While you appeared and disappeared
Curious to see what hadn't changed
Until we got into the old Ford truck
I remember now she was wearing black
Everyone waving from an open window
As we drove off but soon broke down
And you got out to push

Monday of Holy Week Valentine

Flying about in the sunlight
All morning long I watched
Two gnats fighting or mating
Hard to tell which or else
Some design in between
The weaving of a scheme
It took the morning to repair
Their circles into rhymes
Their lines I sat writing there
But it all knotted up at once
Into a ringing in the air
And then they were gone
And now I can hardly read
The spell they scrawled
Of a morning without end

Palm Sunday Valentine

My spectral pomegranate tree's half-dead
And yet it's shouting out orange hosannas
And though it's cursed it blesses me
Each year with the pure uselessness
Of a color not seen anywhere else on earth
To simple chemistry must have been added
Some magic formula now forgotten
Like the blue in the glass of the old windows
A stain of heaven on the lady's dress
I know you can see it's just red-into-orange
Like patience becoming courage
But I can tell you want to touch it
Put your fingers in its wounds
Pull the whole tree down on your head

Lazarus Valentine

A sleeping woman's head appeared
Among the folds of our covered couch
The sun was falling into her face
Of shadows slowly darkening
I wasn't really seeing things
But everywhere I looked
Faces were emerging
From within things
Could we live in a world
Where faces of all sizes
Press in upon us always
And yet we do
I was startled at first weren't you
But now I kiss each one

Joan's Gift Valentine

I was brought up laughing
And always felt seen
I ate kindness for breakfast
And was never corrected
But always shown what to do
How to fix it
If I wanted to
I wanted for nothing slowly
But to be good as you
Fearless as evil but true
To something greater than myself
To learn what you always knew
How to be my own parent
And keep my childhood new

Defensive Valentine

I protect my sins
From all the harm
That might improve them
I don't want the truth to win
At first I push against it
Or else I cave immediately
With a sense of relief
And quiet disbelief
Whatever I take the truth to be
Is for me to know and you
To discover I defend my sins
To the last dregs of forever
But you always knew me
So at least one of us is free

Alone Valentine

I do not love you world enough
I feel you deserve more from me
As a measure of myself
And I'm often short-sheeting
The cut of your jib for coasting off
On centuries of tangents
But we must have talked for hours
And now I really have to go
I can't bear another word
Think world what if we couldn't
Leave you alone for a few hours
But had to sit up all night
Listening to you laugh and weep
And never get to dream or sleep

Shown Valentine

Water to red wine to living blood
You changed it all and poured it out
And stooped and wrote
In the mud of our minds
Your inconceivable name
And then you were gone again
You didn't conquer fear at all
You left that to each of us
And hatred you left standing
In the crowded square shouting
Its religion of doubt
You hadn't come to do it for us
But to show us how it's done
We would have to figure out the rest