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