Thelma's Valentine

As seniors in our little circle

Of friends and colleagues of the spirit

As we approach the beautiful iceberg

On this Titanic of our lives

I wanted to schedule lunch

With you now in the after-world

To get to know one another better

If you have the time once

We get settled in to our new names

And have counted our accounts

What plans we've made for future

Adventures what books

We're re-reading what new

Friends we have found

Arriving Valentine

I was expecting the sun and the stars

But gray clouds covered us completely

For a few seconds we were

Arriving in Corinth again

Unsure which century it was

Until we turned from the ruins

And looked at one another

It's you here so it must be now

It's just me straying out of time

Practicing my remembering again

The younger I feel the older I grow

The more I wonder

When I will arrive in you

And everything's remembered

Today's Valentine

You were dancing on the point of a pin

And I was dancing with you angel

And gave you a spin

And lost you in the crowd

You had gone to find a razor

We could line-dance on

Or a cliff for a pas-de-deux

You would bring me to the edge

Where the waves grow loud

And all our dances come together 

Swahili limbo waltz and clog

Where we could look down on death

And life as equal partners

To be danced away today

Disappeared Valentine

While Charlemagne was learning over there

A grown man to read the nursery rhymes

The Hohokam people were thriving here

In the clear desert air of not yet America

A peaceful agricultral tribe

Where these many buildings stand today

And when St. Francis was alive and preaching

They were carving ball courts out of sand

Over two hundred of them who knows

Abandoned as if a sudden plague

Or greedy lord devastated them

Then did the survivors disappear to the east 

And west and north and south

Like pilgrims on the road to Santiago

 

Weather's Valentine

What are the great powers and principalities

Trying to accomplish this gray Monday

Their flickering constellations whisper

Don't look up if you can't stand feeling small

If you don't like to get dizzy and crumble

Into the light right now

Cloudy-sunny after a long rain

What would we do without the weather

To know how we're feeling

To synchronize with the spheres

Pondering their ideas

Swirling around us and in us

To find something to hold on to

Or to completely let go

When the Cock Crows Valentine

My neighbor who keeps a rooster

Sometimes makes me wonder

How many other farm animals

He's hiding in his house

Has he turned the bedrooms

Into a stable snoring with the horses

I swear some nights I can hear

A cow's sorrowful mooing

Like a secret farm with woods gone

A safe house on a busy city street

For dreaming sheep and the bustle

Of corn stalks striking up

From the living room floor

Called by the moon once more

Mind's Valentine

In the beginning was the I

And the I was in God

And the I was itself a god

Just as God remembered it

When God was eager and young

And started out good and whole

With a simple sketch of the I

It was the first I in the first mind

Then came the I that mocked the I

For taking itself so seriously

And there was laughter on earth

As in heaven the sound of thunder

And the rain became the flesh

of the I it was the true I

Old Valentine

The pure and selfish motive

Of a child knowing nothing

Is to control what it loves

And to saturate the nights

With its terrified screaming

But to think within its smallness

A huge aura is trying to settle

On a decision to stay or go

War-torn they come back to us

From heaven's camps

In search of healing

And end up healing us

But why the war so long

And the child so old 

Johannine Valentine

So we meet again after several lives

For lunch you've lost weight

Cheerful your courage still intact

Feeding on fish and rice and tea

To hear what's come of our fears

Your many moves across the country

The marvels and tragedies we've seen

And how the time has come for you

To move forward and me to fall back

For you to remember everything

And me to slowly forget

Making space for the new discovery

Of far-reaching death

Me waiting for you where we met

Summer Victim's Valentine

Cara Cara red navel dwarf

I had just the spot for you

I wanted to taste you one day

But then you were just a staff

With blossoms what would

Become of you under my care

It was like taking on a child

Whose leaves were blistered hands

That startled when they started

In the heat falling off

What sustained you when you lost

The ground under your feet

What became of your sweetness

Under my helpless care

Flooded Valentine

Tears and rain and sweat

Finally accumulate

On burn scars to flood

Proportions towns float away

On the other side of the mountain

We horseback ride in the cool

Forest you on Diablo the stallion

Me on a mare called Fancy

Whenever joy happens elsewhere

Some disaster crops up to sqluech it

One made-made and the other

An unearned gift of the gods

Past their tears and rain and sweat

Mess of a Valentine

Was I raised to make a mess

Of things to learn the art

Of cleaning up and putting back

In their proper places the words

Let fly across the room

Clearing the air between us

Resolved by afternoon

Our differences collide

Sanding down the edges

I try to explain did you

Know our neighbor has a rooster

Every morning now cock-a-doodle-do

Every morning I love more of you

For Valentine

I've already started planning

My next life even if you say

There won't be one I'm feeling

Super-practical about it

And hope to preserve

Enough ego to go on

To keep up the search

Even though I'll live

In a little house

And go no where

I will have met you

I will have known

What it's for

Beach Cities Valentine

It's early Thursday of the world

And we are hard at work

For days we drove through fires

And floods west with the wind

So we could sit and stare at the sea

With hundreds of others supine

Or celebrative mostly the children

Or walkers overwhelmed by the waves

Swept out and tossed back again

We've come to peer over the threshold

Into the abyss of a sunny day

Troubled and peaceful and weary

And for once with nothing to say

Bedded Valentine

Her name was dull

But her face was dawn

And yes she'd been spat upon

But it never made her cruel

Though she could be abstemious

With time and came to my bed

But once when she was living

And now again she's dead

The tattoo of a rainbow on one cheek

And a painted bluet on the other

A woman of the forest and the creek

Now the landscape of a dream

Where we had but a moment

To catch up but a lifetime it seemed

Stopped Valentine

Truth socializes with everyone

But seems to have few friends

At gatherings it shatters

Into a million wafers

Melting on tongues

Or spit out on the floor

Finally it creates a disturbance

And is asked to leave

No one seems to know its address

Though our best detectives

Have tried to follow it home

One night I passed it on the street

It stopped and smiled at me

And said, 'Go ahead my friend

There's no lie I haven't heard'

 

Snow in Summer Valentine

Winter is a roving widow

Who drags out all her wedding dresses

Refusing to wear black

She lifts them through the dirt

On her way back to her father's house

Having lost her head again

For faithless summer but knows

Her old man will take her back

To her quiet room where everything's

Preserved just as it was

From her high school days

Where it will all start up again

Where the child she's left with

Will lead her back to love

Even Valentine

Whether we like it or not

Whether we can get past

Liking it or not

Whatever's left over is truth

One and one makes one

Or you carry the two

Left with a negative sum

We are always in love with someone

Even if it's usually ourselves

We each have our Orpheus

Or Eurydice inside even if

We scorn them even if

We don't have a romantic

Bone in our bodies

Honduras Valentine

A glimmer of hope was spotted

In Honduras in a cohort of clouds

I write it down for absence of you

I want to be you for twenty-four hours

Probably as long I could be away 

From myself but it would be enough

To get a quick survey of Honduras perhaps

Where you are living under that glimmer

In hopes of being me one day

For which I pity you as much

As you illuminate me

With your cloudy hope

Glimmering above Honduras

Cities and jungles of my dreams

Waving Valentine

These days my fervent prayers

Are all the names of my friends

We gather together in the church

Of occasional rain and sing its praises

Then sit and talk on the beach

Worrying and laughing about one another

Often there's a sermon or a joke

Which drives us off for a swim

Or back to the house for a nap

But sometimes no one comes

Or comes and then quickly leaves

I keep the darker days for myself

My friend the lake seems all I need

And my friend who walks its waves

Something Valentine

If we were really animals

We would need no memories at all

Of guilt or deep regret

But at a certain point

Something comes into us

That separates us from the tree

Suffering into its branches

Under its devouring leaves

And only a few blossoms reach

Out for a better life

Nature becomes a picture

We have colored in

The animals have bequeathed to us

Our conscience and our sin

Godly Valentine

What would you do first

If you had to create

A human body using

All the usual parts but

In a new configuration

Would you put the head

Where the feet are now so

It could kiss the ground

And the feet could walk on air

Would you triple the eyes

Two in the palms of the hands

Two in the middle of the chest

Would you have learned something

From all this if you were a god

True Valentine

The leaves at the ends of its branches

Turn many colors mimicking flowers

Products of the sun overcoming the soil

While the true flowers stay hidden

Almost insignificant among the foliage

But if you pull back the covers

Then you see their Venus sleeping

Naked in her marble flesh

Awaiting her many broken lovers

Bees who come to suck her blood

From wounds that time has made

But only one will wake her

Arriving regal from the future

I know he will be true as you