Circle Time Valentine

In my favorite picture that remains of you

You have your back to the camera

Sitting in a lawn chair reading

While in front of you a vast green

Rolling landscape of lakes and hills

Without trees or people lies

It's late spring-early summer

Before everything turns brown

When heaven still seems

A part of the earth though leaving

And you're still reading it the story

Of your life your head

Bent to the words in wonder

While we old children listen in

Emergencies in Heaven Valentine

If the body is a sacred animal

The soul is slowly eating away

If the fires of so-called love

Burn everything to the ground

Does it go on eating

And planning suppers

Only the fittest can survive heaven

And then move on to a true paradise

Where they are put to work

Pulling burrs out of a silk garment

In the great flat fields of light

From which they grind their flour

Simple farmers and retired kings

Unrequited queens sipping wine

After Osip (from the English) Valentine

Cautious but called

A single fruit falls

In the silent forest

Setting it singing

 

Until the Orioles come

To amaze the branches

With a new tuning

Out of lost aspirations

 

It doesn't matter about sadness anymore

Tears are so transparent and leaf-like

You've mistaken it for nature

 

But it won't protect your heart

It will still have to sing and tremble

It will still be part of the future

Perseid Shower Valentine

I must be a Greek or ancient Egyptian
The way the gods have infiltrated me
They seem to be giving up on nature
Turning all their attention on us
Until the suspense is killing me
As they say the temporarily dead
Who have a way of scolding me
With just a smiling glance
In my general direction
Just knowing they are there
Is enough to calm me down
Just seeing they're returning
Their masterpiece undone

Serving Valentine

You gods who play the long game

Who were part of the early planning

And stay loyal to your name

Great creatures who have no guilt

Or shame who work your will

Tirelessly in every place and time

For whom our mountains and our seas

Are poor reminders of your rhymes

And starry rhythmic breathing

Like you I just want to endure

And stay pissed just a little

Learn to love the nothingness

And the somethingness equally

Unassigned unknown none

The Other Last Thing Valentine

That the spirit would have no obstacles
They chose the purest girls
To sit above the noxious fumes
So the god's voice could come through
Crackly like on an old radio
While we scribes quickly wrote down
Those words immediately passed on
To the highest interpretive authorities
But today everyone's a prophet
Of their own opinions and rewards
Seduced by their own perfume
No one to reveal the future
So it can be decoded
And the past avoided

What's Not To Worship Valentine

Whatever's done to gold
Say this day or your eyes
Smelted with silver
Whatever's done to silver
So it descends from clouds
Unavoidably a river
A moon-lit crossing
Running through the ground
Whatever's done to travel
So it becomes this wandering
I still want to keep going
Hope is the last body we'll ever have to wear
Though it's too loose and itches
You look as beautiful as ever

Reading Sappho While Running Errands Valentine

Did you come back exhausted
From the crowded stores of life
With nothing in your hands
Did you sample a few grapes
And run your sticky fingers
Over an old book or two
Did you argue with the clerk
About the exorbitance of silk
Discarding several dresses
With a flick of your gold wrist
Was your laughter haughty and lewd
When you saw your lover with another
Did you get to the part
Where she hurls her heart
At Aphrodite's feet

Out-gardened Valentine

My small mind has effectively been replaced
By a wide heaven of close-knit dandelions
Sheep-white balls of seeds and
Bright gold turned-up faces
Together basking in the sun
I tried to root them out
While they were young and
I was strong enough
To spread new grass seed
Over them at just the right
Spring shade of moon
The day after a rain
When everything
Is possible

The Mystery of In and Out Valentine

If I look around me
Everything keeps to its given place
But if I look inside me
Things are always moving about
Interpenetrating one another
Forming and dissolving
A dream world in which
I sometimes feel I'm waking
Where colors and sounds
Reveal themselves as languages
I'm learning to speak and read
While outside here in the sun
I enjoy the illusion of sitting alone
Inside I'm thronged with beings
Who call me by my real name

Arts and Crafts Valentine

If I organize my thoughts

And throw them down like clay

On a wheel or knit them

Together into a garment

Or shape them into a vessel

If I turn them on a lathe

And sand them down to gleaming

Forming them into a figure

Stain and polish it

And then wrap it as a gift

To whom can I send it

Who will drink from my crooked cup

Who will wear my ragged shawl

Who will ride my prancing horse

God Fishing Valentine

Alert but helpless as a goldfish

In the bowl of a dazzling day

I am content but wish

For company sometimes

To swim among my fellows

In some intimate pond

But that was not to be my fate

The fascination of a child

Turned out to be my part

Who only wanted greater things for me

When he flushed me

Down the toilet and then cried

To find me gone

Active Waiting Valentine

Now we have a good system in place

By which 'Unknown' can call

And leave not a word for us

But we know very well

He'll just call back later

So we can get to know him

And watch him record

The broken-up message

We're listening to right now

At three in the darkness

When we call him back

Just to hear his voice

Detect in it the signal

Of his coming soon

Waiting Valentine

While I was waiting for you to wake up
Though you're probably just laying there
Scrolling through your phone and dozing
Warm and sweet under the covers
While a small brown leaf
Is twirling from a spider's thread
Someone's world coming to an end
They don't believe you will ever get up
That eventually you'll come and kiss
My cheek and life will begin again
They've foolishly given up on you
The revelation of your love
The twirling of a leaf
Their whole religion

Science Fiction Valentine

If we could visit the communities on Mars

If we could see what they envision

The incoming and the outgoing of souls

The warring cities and the peaceful towns

All rather medieval when not plain evil

If we could explore their landfills

And climb their latest constructions

Learn if they've solved

The problem of cleverness

And if they teach you how to live

Once you get there

 

Birthday Valentine

A knock on the roof
At four o'clock
And a hundred and four
Degrees in the afternoon
I was dreaming of burnt-up rivers
There was nothing mystical
About it for a change
My prayer was easy-peasy
In return for letting me
Live just a little longer
Than might otherwise be
Prefigured in the plan
To see that face to hear that voice
I promise to go quietly in time

Natural Valentine

Even though the beauty of the world

Cannot save us now it stands

In speechless wonder

As a perennial encouragement

To us to save ourselves

Its glories and its sufferings

Offer us pictures of our past

Mountains and rivers we once were

And cast off in our long journeys

Toward affection and remorse

In it everything we've been and done

Returns to be reconciled and owned

The last vestige of a promise we made

To become beautiful ourselves

Thoughtful Valentine

Do I exercise my thoughts enough
Do I think about my thinking
Is it too automatic and watery
Do I have any succinct ideas
About where they originate
These questions themselves
Or what thoughts are worth thinking
And what thoughts decide their value

A piece of music or a painting

Can come close or a death observed

From the safety of my thoughts

Let me go in your stead

Let me bury my I in your you

Whose thoughts awake the dead

Phantom Valentine

One last grown-up butterfly
My phantom in the yard
With time running out
As quickly as it rushes in
Frantic beauty floating
Searching for a place to stay
While space just stands there
Patiently waiting to be filled
With leaves and sunlight
Wings of assembled dust
That flutter back and forth
Like a grieving mother
Achieving her composure
When she finally comes to rest

Called Valentine

I had a mandate and a mission
A divine commission
But I misplaced it on the way
To some forgotten destination
Now life is my vocation
How to keep them each alive
Body soul and spirit
Even when the soul
Tries to kill the body
And the body scorns the spirit
So needy for the inspiration
And good company
Of other bodies souls
And spirits

Freedom Valentine

The flowers of the palm trees
Are falling like snow in the sun
The out-breath is always dying
To take in again its life
What connects the leaves to the body
Must be some idea of a seed
High in the palm tree a man
Hacking at his mind with a saw
Forcing the tree upward
The dead limbs falling away
He shouts to the one below
Leave me here and let me sway
There's a fragrance coming in from the sea
Enough to live on forever

Wind-Rung Bell Valentine

Sometimes my cat's tail accidentally
Rings that little rusted bell otherwise
You can only hear it when the wind
Reaches a certain degree of emotion
That it pushes back and cries out
So meekly so sweetly
It begs for mercy shameless
As a child singing
Keep me around
I can sing for you
Whenever you want
I will bring your youth
Back to you reborn
Before you die

To a Spy in Heaven Valentine

I want my entelechy to speak
To your entelechy and say
Thank you for contacting me
I know how busy you are
But I need a big favor
Something only you can do
Though I know how difficult
It can be to get a message through
Even the night couriers are slow
But could you please tell your friend
Your current curious manifestation
To keep searching don't relent
I too am a spy of the soul
And will know him when I see him

Visiting Valentine

What if the pregnant Mary came to me

Would the child quicken in my throat

Or strike me blind and speechless

Or would she put me at my ease

Sit me down and take my hands

Into her comprehending hands

Where nothing need be said

Everything known everything forgotten

Everything given everything taken away

Darkness would gather around us

And our hearts would break

And mend and break again

Until the last sun would wake us

Why Valentine

It's like being in a shooting gallery
Or would you rather have a real war
Like the sandy trenches of Samothrace
With spears flying or when
The arrow was invented
At the same moment all over the earth
Born to be a bullet in the head
Ultimately I take a positive view
Of the end why
Would you chose not to love
Deny
What's obviously right there
Not say a prayer