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