Today's Valentine

Whatever is left over from yesterday

I gather in my head in the sun

After it's been digested by my dreams

As if discovering they're naked fleeing

After my angel has brought me back

Awake and warm in my bed

A little shattered a little joyful

And I can start to resemble myself

And stand up to slip into today

Today how I missed you

And how marvelous I didn't 

Have to go looking for you again

Like a long-lost brother

Laden with gifts of light

Secret Valentine

The secret of my happiness

Is that it's not a secret

It doesn't depend

On being happy

All the time in fact

It has nothing to do

With time

It's more an imaginery

Friend who's always there

Sometimes we sit down together

So as not to be overwhelmed

He has so much wisdom

I can only listen and then

He tells the funniest jokes

Apocryphal Valentine

Was Abel not his brother's keeper

Was he not able to calm him down

Wasn't his goodness not responsible

In part for his brother's enmity

Why had he offended him 

Laughing at his silly drawings

Rejection leading to rejection

Who will have the upper hand

Cain had left to pursue his passions

It was Abel who went after him

And found him at last living alone

By the sea building another boat

They fought then and died together

In one another's arms

Out of Slavery Valentine

Only when I am free myself

Can I come back to free others

And I can only free myself

When I become my own master

How much of what we call heaven

Depends on what happens on earth

How much of what is immortal

Grows out of this mortal life

When I left the other world

And came here how many

Cheered me on and still

Stand by my side when I

Am beaten down how many

Are always offering their hands

Found Valentine

I'll tear this page out

When I finish writing it

But if you're reading this

It means I'm playing with you love

In honor of this ephemeral

Immortal day on which I

Wanted you to find these words

Not forgotten by their writer

Rediscovered by their reader

In some old book or drawer

Hardly enough space to express

My ripped-up love for you

And yet they do 

See I've put back all the pieces

Its Own Valentine

All wars are soul wars

The body and the spirit

Are already at peace

It's the soul that worries them

How will it take the body in hand

How will it respect the thinking

That goes on inside and outside it

The soul hears them sometimes

Arguing in the night about its future

They try to remember their own

Childhoods before and after

Their delicate child was born

And they had to stay together

For its sake until it's on its own

Rain Driving Valentine

At last cold January rains

Beat the earth back into shape

Some semblance of itself

Restoring a luster to the old

Colors of the world as if

They had a future

While dark ominous 

Clouds above us

Jostle with the sun

Dramatic but playful

The darkness so full of itself

And the light so empty

Until these drops of life

Pour down at last

Thelma's Valentine

Some questions just demand answers

And when they're given they're not wanted

Or they're received but not understood

To which answer you are 

The question some questions

To which you might have an answer

And others begging to be asked

The questions unsure they 

Want to marry their answers

And live separately together

And move on to love

Which just to feel and touch

Even for a few moments

Already asks so much

Rita's Valentine

Of course you will die in a poem

In the world of the poem

In the poem of the world

Of course you will dissolve

And become a question of when

You will appear again in the poem

Like a note in the music of the poem

A note that turns on itself

Struggling to betray the theme

Of the poem in the funeral home

The corpse of the poem laid out

In a simple pine coffin

Or shoved into the fire

Its bones coming back to you in a bag

Connected Valentine

Who am I and to whom

Am I speaking I would like

To speak to your manager

Not to complain but say

How much I appreciate

Having to wait in a long line

For such excellent service

It gave me time to think

How hard your day must be

I wondered what sustains you

What gives you hope in the world

Before we get disconnected

And I forget your name

Enough Valentine

One word used to be 

Enough for me ma or da 

But language immediately

Wanted to take over

And I struggled to speak up

For myself more and more

Using my words all they

Come down to all I have

But before words arrived

Back there before memory

Like battered survivors

Entrusted them to my care

One word was enough for me

As it will soon be enough again

Behind Valentine

Words come to light

Like extinct birds

On old scrolls

I shoo the cat

From my chair

And pour my eyes out

To feel the light

Left in the words

I want to meet

The scribes who wrote

On these bricks

Behind the words

I want to find

Their children's eyes

The first wisdom

That's Not On The Menu Valentine

Yes I like a little sauce

On my day it's no secret

Not bitter but spicy

I take it mild

But with a little bite to it

To clear the impossibilities away

I'll have the entree of clouds

I try to explain it to the waiter

How I like it cooked

But he just stares at you

As if he'd never seen anything

As beautiful and hungry before

My dinner guest death

Just sitting there and smiling

Every Day Valentine

A simple talent for light

Lifts itself to genius every day

When the sun comes up

The one persisting example

Of how it's done

Practicing and practicing

How to turn ore into gold

And gold into the musical

Structures of our lives as we drive

Through canyons to the ocean

Arriving at just the right moment

To watch it all fall apart again

Until the stars come to save us

And the moon carries us through

Past Lives Valentine

We lived on the lake

We lived in the woods

We lived at the end of the line

We gave birth

We figured it out

We grew friends

Like a small orchard

Where a few bear fruit

We did see the genius

Of small things

We were not fooled

By greatness or gardens

We could feel

How they suffered

To get that way

Your Basic Valentine

I assume your eyes

Are large enough

To see anything

And your arms 

Are long enough

To embrace everything

I might say or do

And that you're 

Not troubled

How one thing leads

To another life

That you understand

And still expect me

To understand you

Eyes Valentine

One eye on the earth

One eye on the stars

We try to marry them together

Mother and father

Arguing and welcoming

One another's gifts

As if we were born

Out of wedlock out of first love

The woman who goes home

To live with her mother

The father less remote when absent

Grown-up children who've

Come home to care for them or not

Their eyes now fixed on heaven

Invisible Valentine

I think that invisible force-field

Which draws us together

While it pushes us apart

That empty gulf between grief

And laughter called the heart

In the scientific dictionaries

Of mythological beasts

Was the first winged creature

To roam the earth alone

The evolution of a feeling

As in how many birds

Does take to make

Being fly over to being

New York Valentine

Wit and tact got mangled last night

Yet another hit and run a woman

Was seen in a great black coat

Walking the streets filling with snow

Who was brought in later for questioning

Who confessed yes she saw them

Earlier in the day in Chinatown

Sitting there solemn and gray

In her great black coat so the cops

Arrested her for minor depression

But her lawyer got her out

And took her back to her apartment

Full of books to save her

Precocious Valentine

When I was five and some

I walked to the lake alone

Across three busy streets

And a bridge over the tracks

And was later found

Playing on the sand

Where I had spent the day

Asking for food from strangers

Or when I needed something to drink

Convincing them my parents

Were just there down the beach

Was I dreaming or lying

It felt so free to be on my own

Making it up as I went along

But all I remember about that day

Besides the terror of my mother

Going on in the background

Was a long conversation with the lake

In which I learned you too were

In the world and I would find you

Shakespearean Valentine

Among evil's bad actors death is not one

Though it's been made to play the part

It's the adventures that lead up to it

Let's face it along the way

That we must want something for ourselves

As much as those who follow us

The empty stage is full of exits

And burgeoning with entrances

If in every death we die

In every life we are born

A sober ecstasy in the sense

That this contingency holds sway

Night following day.

Longing Valentine

Humanity is so positioned on the scale

That it receives the glory of a night

And of a day with willful precision 

Something clearly coherent at work

Especially where they coalesce

The mythic light and the sacred darkness

If you picture them as the actual beings

We know them to be the last

Reflections of a pair

Of brothers or sisters

Who go their separate ways

With their knives at twilight

And their kisses at dawn

How long can this go on

Longer Valentine

I will probably be late for heaven

I love the earth so much

It's where everything happens first

Like New York or Alexandria in the day

Surrounded by its mysteries and dramas

And so many things to read about

And to experience it all takes time

But there are no books or time in heaven

So one has to be read to like a child

Stories that give strength to growing bones

Until one feels the earth is turning a corner

And beginning its sure ascent

To becoming a star or a sun

And one just wants to stay with it

And be in its company a little longer

Poems Just Want To Be Prayers Valentine

Come now sun

Warm thou me

A night of jigsaw dreams

In which I'm awake amazed

And just stand there watching

The pieces clumsily at first

Put themselves together

I see I'm not just myself

But someone else who watches me

Whom I already am becoming

It's a scene of the Rockies

Or the Carpathians in spring

I was taking pictures of myself

It could be a desert or a lake

Crying Valentine

Today the dove's cry is a muffled caw

The crow's complaint what

The dove was forced to say

If you put the sounds of birds together

All over the world at once

Would it be an Aum

You would hear or the alarm

Going off on that last morning

I mean the rhetorical dove's

And the shiny articulate crow's cries

Who fly off in opposite directions

All their flights leading far away

Leaving us in the silence awake

With nothing but the possible to do

And only the impossible to do it with

Near-by Valentine

Breakfast this morning is watching

Three ring-necked doves crowding

The birdbath with their plumpness

Just outside my window and then

A helping of bread and juice

While I read your emailed dream

Chiding myself for too little

Water in the birdbath

Barely enough for a sip or two

But they as always seemed content

If not satisfied with my intention

And your near-by words of love

That always make me smile

Outlived Valentine

The only question is

Will we be rescued

Or are we already doomed

To be rescued again

Again and again

There's an invincibility

About life that can't

Be grasped by time

The only place

Death could survive

Death that delicate flower

Slowly growing extinct

Having outlived its usefulness

Rescued Valentine

If I sit out in the sun too long

Brooding over the sun's old songs

And I bake and I seethe

Until I become a flame

Please come get me

Please collect the feeble ash

Of my arms and put them

Around you still burning

To be touched again

Again and again

While love passes through

The guest of my heart

Who comes and goes

Refining me to gold

In his own sweet time

Now's Valentine

I resume the now in a shower

Of memories like a swimmer

Turning his head to breath

Before ducking back down

Into the wavy current

So more is lost than seen

In the forward motion

And the now become something snatched

From the surrounding sea of the past

As his arms propel his head ahead

And his feet emit dissolving circles

So the now becomes something

He swims toward suspended

Which he knows is there

Whenever he breaks the surface

And sees the next wave looming

The Elementals Singing to the Thrones Valentine

Come sit with me in the sunlight

And sense how the earth under our feet

Rays back its growing glow

From fires raging in its depths

How something moves between them

That intersects in us

Between the cold abstractions up there

And the burning at the stake down here

See how warmth as love's

First instinct was to build

A heart for it a home

And then come sit with me

In the shadows where the gods gather

To take another breath

And go on singing us their song

Epiphanous Valentine

Even if you think it's only a story

Wouldn't you need to ask yourself

Where such a story could come from

And what such a story contains

Even as a lexicographer of the mind

Or an absent member of the jury

You'd have to admit in the end

There is some magic here some light

But no point looking for causes

Let's just focus on effects

Does it change everything for you

Does it go straight to the bone

Does it raise you from the dead

Sounded Valentine

He did not hand her a letter

That happens in another story

But it was the same magic they wore

Those messengers of glory

To us who were only waiting

To be overwhelmed at last

By what we always wanted

Just to be loved so we

Ourselves could learn to speak

Its rugged language one day

Fluently with a feel for the vowels

And how the tongue rolls

In the mouth how the lips

Shape the meaningless sounds

Prologue in Heaven Valentine

In the beginning was Wisdom

And Wisdom was the mirror of God

And Wisdom was both uncreated

And yet created out of nothing

She did not create God

But was herself the image of God

In the process of creating all things

Among which was his first likeness

Through whom the world was given life

And the mirror was broken

And we became the scattered pieces

Which Wisdom is still gathering

But God did not look away

For she was the woman he mirrored

His gaze was fixed upon her

The beginning of all love

Tolstoyan Valentine

All good thinking is alike

But because it's a mixture of both

All bad thinking is different

I thought I swallowed a sharp

Piece of plastic I thought of it

Swimming around in my gut

While I was eating a piece of cake

I stared into the darkness

Of my imaginary death

Trying to compose myself

To console myself there was still

The sweetness of life in my mouth

And then you in the foreground

Holding up that little piece of plastic

Between your sweet fingers

Flowery Valentine

Whose preciosity

Is overcome only

By their sincerity

These flowers all flowers

Their impossibility

Their resurrection

Before dying and dying

Their necessary happenstance

Their staged insouciance

Coming right up to the edge

Of some immaculate conception

Of what reality can make

Out of a colorful imagination

Their implications

Needed Valentine

What is needed is the sun on Sunday

To rise above that churchly dome

Of clouds and fill this chair

Where I am waiting in the cold

Fading moonlight shadows

For my constellation to arrive

If I look through the dark earth

I can see it on the other side

Where summer has gone

But the past can only grow

What it plants as they sang

So I sit waiting for the sun

To fill me to the bone

Mute Valentine

One can speak frankly to a cat

Or a mirror or the open air

One can confess everything to a tree

And give it back its penance

But to you I bring the silence

Of my tamed excuses

One could have loved you more

One could not have

How can we both be true

When I'm the one

Who wronged you

No cat can say that

Or wall and still

You loved me back

Clairvoyant Valentine

I don't want

Second vision

So much as 

The first vision

Of you strolling

In a bee-line

Toward my mind

Though you were not

Aware of it

At the time

And I was 

Pretending along

That's what we do

Us lovers

We bring love

Into the world

We harvest it

And store it

For the winters

Moving On Valentine

Staring down the corridors of the future

With the sun behind me rising

So my shadow precedes me

Dodging in and out of other darknesses

Though all the paths lead far away

I still sense you coming toward me

My aimless wandering has not lost you

You invisible one who keeps finding me

Though I keep losing you I go on

Following the shadows of the past

I saw you once so I know you're there

Stars filled the trees the dream was real

Even if only for an instant

Your light illuminating me