Sunday, February 28, 2021

Incarnating Valentine

If you've never been deeply amused
You'll never be deeply frightened
If you've never been deeply confused
You'll never be deeply enlightened
Nothing is colder than the desert at night
Nothing hotter during the day
One drives me deeper into the ground
While the other wafts me away
I planted a tree on your birthday
And shook your ashes into the earth
Around it and sprinkled it
With water from a holy spring
One day with juicy oranges
You'll fill my mouth again

Saturday, February 27, 2021

Getting There

When you get there you forget
What you came for and must
Go back retracing your steps
And half-way there recalling
What it was and turning back
You were almost there the first time
All this only took seventy years
Until you noticed you'd been
Doing this your whole life
Either retrograde or direct
Long since you became a star
Harnessed to your orbit
Shepherding the space around you
The light you went back to seek

Friday, February 26, 2021

What I Know Valentine

I know you smile and refuse
My relentless optimism you my joy
In the face of so many disasters
Ours and the world's incompetence
Whether the history of sin will win
Over the brief stories of love
When it comes to David and Goliath
The giant afraid of his shadow
And the boy who becomes a king
The true history is written
By deeds of service rendered
By kings and queens
Who know they are
Kings and queens

Thursday, February 25, 2021

Verdin's Valentine

Two Verdins come to harvest
The dandelion seeds
Light enough to land
On the tall stems
Heavy enough to tip
Them over spilling
Them on the grass
Where they are easier
To reach is that
Where they get their color
Pale greenish-yellow breasts
From the dandelion flower
Barely an hour my wonder
A thread of the world unwove
 

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Its Valentine

One wants it
To stabilize
At perfect
Even as it
Never is
But almost
Borrowing perfection
If it has 
A source
You reach it
And it touches
You back
You're it

A Long Sentence Valentine

When the sun at last arrested me
And took me into custody
I knew I would have to confess
I was that child who did
Those things I shot the tree
But not the bird I swear
How I ravished your world
Over and over I was taken down
Strangely always protected
By friends I didn't trust
Was it wrong to have always
Counted on you to have known
From the beginning you
Would be there at at the end

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

Elemental Valentine

We sleep through the summers
So we can be awake in the winters
Our dreams are like springs and falls
Wind and rain remembered visitors
When the snow covers us all
And we wake up in the middle of the earth
In the mineral light of our souls
Where the seeds are stirring
Having buried the sun
We want to be there
At the very beginning
Where life enters matter
And matter gives up its life
We long to lend a hand

Monday, February 22, 2021

Dante's Valentine

The universe escapes me
I escape into the universe
It's such a beautiful day
And I am taking you with me
Do we have something better to do
Than feel how the darkness
Obliterates us how the stars
Call out to us clearly
Preparing us for something
Returning us to the earth
Each morning safely
Now we know we are immortal
And have only to work out
The mortal part

Friday, February 19, 2021

There Valentine

Tips of icebergs
Tips of mountain tops
Tips of your fingers
The reaching never stops
Eyes touch eyes
There on the tip of your eye
You have something hold still
That cannot see itself
Unless in the mirror of you
An image appears
As I might have been
Or soon would be
If love would save me
Or I save you

Thursday, February 18, 2021

Love Despite Love Valentine

Two eyes on the outer world
And one eye on the inner
I go back and forth
Trying to bring them together
But often they just collide
And I go careening about
Both worlds like snow does
Bursting from a tree in the sun
Cascades sifting down
In a soft wind
Glittering like grace
And suddenly the veil
Of the veil is lifted
And I can see your face

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Warm Ashes Valentine

I feast before I fast
I know the flesh won't last
But first the flame and then
The ash a bird's wings stirring
A table a clock a skull
I have placed myself upon
The altar of my sins
Drunk the wine and bread
And confessed your glory
As unworthy as I'm sorry
While you were always 
Just waiting here inside
Warmly to receive me

Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Only Those Who Love Are Free Valentine (for Mary)

On the occasion of my graduation
From serf to slave
I felt ashamed of my freedom
Perceiving how only those who love
Are free and this sat me down
It was a cumulative apprehension
Of revolutionary dimensions
And being toward dawn already leaning
I woke up in the dream of the world
In the dream of myself
And you were there mingling
Some party in a basement
Both keeping our distance
Or over coffee fast and furious
The one who knew this too

Monday, February 15, 2021

What Is Good Valentine

It's good that when I was young
I fed myself on books and lakes
So I'd have them to come back to
The ending of the mind
Only the beginning can tell
The first half of my life
Finishing my former life
Before I could begin this one
Trying to be good at something
Which is both a science
And an art waiting
For beauty to call
And hear you say
This is good this is good

Sunday, February 14, 2021

Valentine's Valentine

Even love has a birthday
Is memorialized with flowers
And a secret wish
Refusing to tell its age
Hurrying to blow out the candles
And open its gifts
Away or toward us
Love seems always moving
In any event adrift afraid
Until it reminds us
Just when we'd forgotten it
Today's my birthday
Do you even remember my name

Saturday, February 13, 2021

Human Valentine

I love how some words widen out
To include even their opposite meaning
There's something generous in that
Or to become a word of one
Repeated letter w-w-w-w
Or l-l-l the names of the upper gods
That heal the lips that speak them
What word would you use
To describe a word
That doesn't want to be a word
That refuses pronunciation 
The self-contradictory word
Unspeakable doesn't quite say it

Friday, February 12, 2021

Caller ID Valentine

When I hear the phone's trill
I always hope it's Jess or Joan
Not 'Name Unavailable'
And never the blank 'Unknown'
Or someone who politely
Just wants to leave a message
About something I don't really
Need to know right now
A death announcement
Or a dental appointment
I need to re-schedule
I only pick up for the names
I love and know

Betweren Valentine

I'll have to clean the birdbath
If I expect that flicker to return
Or these sparrows to be grateful
As I want them to feel
I try to be to them
And the plants in whose presence
I take my short walks
Who try to soothe me
With their long vowels 
Inventing new languages every day
I'll have to learn to speak
If I expect them to be heard
Something passes between us
A sigh and a living word

Thursday, February 11, 2021

All the Means Valentine

What if you had all
The means of rejoicing
But you did not rejoice
Why would you refuse
The choice of bliss
Would you not rejoice
Would you find some excuse
Make up some story
You had to get back to work
Something just came up
Some sadness that demands
Your immediate attention
And you'll call me later

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Next Valentine

Biography is brief
But long is life
To be continued always
Never the end though some
Last longer than others
Where does their unused portion go
Their unlived life
I'd like to know
Like something being given up
So someone else
Could have it
And carry it further
To the next and the next

Called Back Valentine

I confused a calling
With a means of escape
Opportunities don't only
Attract they compel 
So I ran all the way back
To the 12th century 
Just to catch up a little
Only to read in the stars
I had to keep going back
To the 9th and the 3rd
Until I'd come upon
A resurrection
Where I could stop
And heal

Sophie's Valentine

She sits a shadow in the darkness
With light around her like a halo
So we can just see the outline
Of her head bent to the pictures
She's drawing lonely as a scribe
Writing down the words of the gods
Reflecting them back to us
Until knowing becomes doing
She has the courage to be humble
Taking dictation as if she
Weren't the source of all wisdom
The dark one in the mirror
Who is drawing us all

Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Ready Valentine

A poem should convince you
Of its need to be a poem
And make you believe
In poetry even if only for
The few seconds it lasts
You are stung by something
Exotic like what does language want
So much preparation has gone
Into creating it and speaking it
You have to be ready
At a moment's notice
To leave it all behind
Everything ends in a poem

Dove's Valentine

The dove is the harshest bird
Its sqwacks and its coos
One scolds me one soothes
I haven't a clue
Which can be counted on
Alarm or calm
When it sweeps through my yard
Peace coming and going
I try to focus on the rhythm
Over longer and longer
Periods of time
Until there could only be
This one dove coming
And going for now

Monday, February 8, 2021

Just Because Valentine

Just because god is dead
Doesn't mean he's gone away
Your hate and love are fastened to him
Whatever you call father
Even if you never knew him
God is the absent umbrella father
Of whom you are ashamed
A child you wind up rejecting
Never knowing when he'll show up
Wanting money or just to hold you
Where did you come from father
We would not have been friends as kids
You with your stories and me with my sins

Taking the Air Valentine

The pond is so silky in the sun
I can feel the fish and the feet
Of the ducks over there bobbing
Up and down cruising around
The baby carriages and the joggers
Heavy and slim trundling past
How everything is fastened safely
To the earth except the trees
Who keep reaching for the sky
As if under arrest by the clouds
Chased in and out of the sun
So much mayhem and magic up there
Until I see it's all just pictures
Passing through my mind of air

Saturday, February 6, 2021

Fuller Valentine

I was marveling how the dead go on
Living in us a kind of further life
We feel diminished by the loss
Of something somehow more
A part of us we must imagine now
And grasp at them with our grief
Surprised how easily they could slip
Into the invisible world around
When there was so much love to live
What could be so urgent
They must leave us so bereft
Unless they wanted us to know
Our lives together are even fuller
Than any body could enclose

Thursday, February 4, 2021

Asked Valentine

Can I ask you a favor
Even after how many years
As if you didn't know my answer
Just your way of changing the subject
So I would pause and wonder
If there was still something unknown
Between us like the exact
Date of our parting or
Could you do dinner tonight
The trivial and the solemn
Requests love makes
Of no one else but you
So go ahead and ask me
As if I could be true

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

Another Hovering Valentine

The bees are systematic
Mindful among the dandelions
A whole swathe of them
Sprung up after the rain
Which must look like
A field of sunflowers
To the ants passing below
Swaying in the breeze
But tallness is all relative
To your size and the bees
Can lift their weight in gold
While the dandelions plead
Take all of me if you please

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Hovering Valentine

How can we come to a true conception
Until we allow for a pure perception
Just seeing what's there
In its perfecting standing still
And beholding it
Without judgment or fear
But how far back in time
Do you have to get
To sense it's all pictures
Both themselves and something else
Like a hovering cloud
Working through them
Through the small space of the present
Another pyramid of sand is falling
But if you look away a moment
You can almost hear it singing
Something to us

Monday, February 1, 2021

Sky Valentine

Could you say the birds
Condescend to the trees
Does that imply too much
Order to the sky too much clinging
The way it feels its way along
Part planned part searching
Part sealed part open
Don't you think the sky 
Is free to choose its own 
Armor and vestments
Or run naked into the ocean
The freedom that comes
From knowing how to travel
From life to life