Whoever You Are Valentine

It's awesome to have

The final say over yourself

To feel yourself the weight of things

And yet be weighed often by the world

More or less found wanting in value

Living in deep debt for everything

House and friends life and death

Paying love's monthly mortgage

And putting its daily bread on the table

And so much trusting to do

When there is no hand to grasp

And draw you up out of the dark well

It's all so bleak and true

And hopeless without you

Its Side Valentine

When I remembered one night

In my deepest parts of the woods

And in the highest sense like stars

It's only because of love

That we are still alive and kept

Alive by it its creatures

I felt relieved and could sleep

I knew how clever and subtle

It could be for its survival

How stern and impersonal at times

Still it only matters

If you are on its side

It will die for you forever

And you may never die

Renewable Valentine

If sometimes you are very upset

Unhappy with yourself my everything

Remember for a few moments

How happy you make me

How proud and incompetent

To love you enough this is

The real contentment on earth

To become what we love

Whatever we aren't yet

A part of us already is

Most of what happens is hidden

From us though we wrote the plan

And that we first embraced today again

On our way to the meeting place

Each Valentine

Each red hibiscus flower burns

For just one day like the day-lily  

But makes up for it in numbers

What it loses in longevity

Not like the rose or the gardenia

Which unfold in rows laying themselves

Open petal by petal as if

Placement is everything and time

Can be stopped for a few seconds 

But it's the fragrance that's the real

Fruit of a flower all I can harvest

Stooping to inhale its secret soul

I grow them for their color and their form

And the clear sense they hold

Something nascent from another world

Our Lives Valentine

When I look back the past

Is like a play being rehearsed

By actors just coming into their lines

Every day learning the smallest gestures

Aiming for the center of the story

That stunning moment when

Reality descends and turns

To look at you and me

Sitting tenth row to the right

How can we explain ourselves

I mean I remember we slept and walked

For a long time we talked on the beach

Watching the boats in the glittering sun

And accidentally ran into this theater

Where they happened to be playing our lives

God's Dilemma Valentine

Of all his estranged children

Plant and animal or stone

Who is more personal to God

More intimately alone with him

Than a human being

Even when he doesn't grasp

The idea of God the idea

Still exists you are I am

What God set out to be

Who could accept all he wanted

Was to become a human creature

To become his own creature

In the depths of flesh and blood

Only love would go that far

Starting Valentine

It's strange to go back

Even when I get there

I'm still moving forward

Mulling over what's

Gone down weaving it

With what's just happened

How many pounds of flesh

Must the past pay for the future

Still it's beautiful to go back

And find the seeds I planted

Still sticking to my sweating palm

Just before they hit the ground

To go back all the way

To where it started and sit down

And survey it all ahead

Sounded Valentine

There was once a tree who loved language

Who grew up among speechless trees

It was he who survived the fires

When no one had heard his pleas

Like language he learned to be many trees

Many forests to distill the sounds

Filtering down from the sun and stars

Words that were nothing more than leaves

Drawn up and falling back to the ground

Until one day a runaway child

Came wandering through the shade

Pursued by a word he had never heard

Something that sounded like love

Unclouded Valentine

I feel my dead are more alive to me

Than I to them their sight and touch

Unclouded by flesh and blood

While I have only memories

And occasional dreams of them

In which they appear as if nothing's changed

It's like I only see them from behind

While they look straight into my eyes

And think my thoughts with me

Being now thoughts themselves

That go on thinking of me

And holding out hope for me

To feel along with them

Only in loving are we free

Just Asking Valentine

What's become of the circular path

I carved out of the woods that spring

Half-way a sunlit clearing

Under a maple tree to rest in

What's become of the amazing whiteness

Of the drifts of trillium or the day

I stumbled on a yellow lady's slipper

And brought you running to see it

Or the raspberries we feasted on

Or the apple trees we planted

Just twigs we worried through the winter

Buried under the waves of snow

What's become of our overgrown hearts

Will they ever come to fruition

Unacceptable Valentine

Nothing seems to be working today

A door won't open the window's stuck

When I reached for my coffee cup

It shattered in my hand

Blood dripped on the carpet and floor

The phone is dead and the TV warns

Don't think of going outdoors

I'm buried under books and bombs

Falling in children's souls

So much more tightly I pull

My love around me its glow

Though it only goes so far

But just enough to let me stand

And yell my eternal NO

Late Lunch Valentine

Surprised me when I looked up

The wasting half-moon in the totally

Blue sky of two in the afternoon

Like the last patch of the first snow

On a mountain I'd never noticed before

I try to swallow whatever's

Given me I always try gratitude first

But often later I have to spit it out

And cruelty in any form

Makes me vomit in my throat

But when I saw that morsel moon

I knew how starving I really was

For food of a different sort

And swallowed it whole with my heart

Golden Valentine

The shadow of a bird I watched

Written on a golden wall

But there was no bird at all

Just wing-like leaves and twigs

The negative of a bird

Staining the golden wall

A reflection thrown by flowers

The divining of a bird

In the memory of an hour

Wavering on the golden wall

But then a real bird came

And left the shadow of its song

So gentle and suffering and strong

It dissolved that golden wall

Trying Valentine

At the high point of the day

When there are no shadows

At the low point of the night

When there is no light

At the brightest and the darkest times

When I sleep dreaming among the gods

Caught up in their creative whirl

Struggling to unravel their words

Or when I'm dazed by my daily tasks

Clearly seeing no way forward or back

Feeling scorched in my soul and blank

I stop for a second and try to imagine

What it's like to be nothing

And every living thing at the same time

What it's like to be a human being

Trapped in the darkness and free as the sun

A Kind of Ascension Valentine

Like a child picking at the dead

Sliced-open body of a frog

I turn and turn the past

Somewhere there must be a pond

And a whole summer waiting

As he extracts its lovely eye

And places it carefully on a slide

And peers down into the microscope

And senses it's still alive 

Not the eye only but what it sees

Looking up from the other end

A distant croaking of the heart

A ripple loosening the reeds

His first discovery of his part

What Is an Electron Valentine

Between panic and exultation

Between self-pity and cold reason

In that little mediating space

Between light and matter

I am listening to someone drilling down

Hammering on steel and wood

Hoping to pound me into the ground

Thank God he stops once in a while

To catch our breath and change position

And immediately some sun absorbs me

Turns me into a glimmering cloud

Indifferent to all above and below

Until I waver between light and darkness

Holding them both at bay or not

And Then Valentine

And then you closed the book 

On me so I missed the remaining

Revealing chapters of your story

Though I heard you went to Turkey

And taught the children of refugees

And once as in the movies

The back of your head and bearing

Made me embarrass myself

With a stranger on a busy street

Sure it was you sorry it wasn't

Leaving me standing there shaken

With its jolt of joy and grief

That it was possible to touch so deep

And then it simply disappear

Blue Valentine

When I look out from my little mind

My narrow window on the world

This morning awake in my leafy yard

Alone among my many troubles

I see there's not a cloud in the sky

They've all fallen to the ground

And left behind this purest blue

Full of promise and reassurance

Enough to make me want to cry

And then I see seven angels land

In my ancient pomegranate tree

And one who slowly descends to me

And stretches out his hand and says

Here brother take and eat

Dodie's Valentine

You were my first taste of love

Even before I could say the word

You chased me in the grass

And we fell down laughing

It took me a while to see you

As a person with your own life

Things that had nothing to do with me

You were my first experience of alone

And separate from everything else

I remember your modest dignity walking

Through the city streets with me

Holding my timid hand

When you were my Athena

And I was your little man

Anniversary of Your Death Valentine

This equality of the sun

This freedom of the air

This sisterhood of the trees 

Why can't we have that too

Why can't we be more like water

And read what the gods have written

In mists and rain and dew

How can we have good things

And not want to be

Good ourselves or at least

Better than our machines

I think it's simply because

We still believe in death

Are still convinced it's true

Whitsun Valentine

The crooked shadow of a trill

Though its quick flight is straight

But otherwise the yard is still

Hypnotized by the heat 

Earlier before you arrived

The false hope of a cool breeze

Ambled through the blue leaves

A momentary retrieve

But now it's real hell we meet

The quiet at the center of a flame

In which we are slowly being consumed

Through the motionless afternoon

So what's left of us by nightfall

Is just the crackling of the stars

Friendly Valentine

My friend who tended sheep

My friend who wrote a starry book

My friend about to graduate

My friend crossed over two years now

My friend who wrote to me out of the blue

My friend the apothecary of smiles

My friend the repairer of pets

My friend who went back to her home town

My friend climbing the ladder of lost hopes

My friend life and death all around me

My friend my next breath

My friend who is like a marriage

My friend who lowered the rope to save me

My friend who scatters my ashes

For You Valentine

What makes me quake

What keeps me awake

To stand before all I love 

And know what's at stake

When even my unworthiness seems

Shallow and fake

My love for my own sake

For all for me I can take

To feel your gaze drift toward me

Whether I'm asleep or awake

Things I love people I love

The earnestness of children or a tree

That saves me from myself for you

Just as I'm about to break

To The Wedding Valentine

We must walk miles to the wedding

It won't come to us

But only if we get invited

By an angel we can trust

We must come to a clearing

In the woods hungry and unsure

And share our meal with a dove

A greedy crow pursues

We must lose our heads and hasten

Down a path we can't retrace

Until we finally reach the gate

And knocking enter the great domed room

Where the bride and groom await

We must have nothing left to give

But all our love

How Valentine

How do I find the feeling

That I'm going in my life

In the right direction toward

What is my deepest longing

With the light behind me

So the shadow of my hand

Writing these words

Falls across the page

A darkness I peer through

From which the words emerge

Suffering from being written down

Like prisoners filing out

Into the light and me among them

Just another word