Giving Day Valentine

Every morning now a mockingbird

Lands on my neighbor's roof

To get a load of me first

With her left then her right eye

Sitting here in the sunny shade

Don't you ever fly she asks

Her scolding is like an opera to me

Just lazing here in the shadowy light

Don't you see I say

You are what I dreamed of

The last bird in the world

Don't you see you conjured me

If I'm ever to fly

You must marry me

An Arborist in My Former Life Valentine

I've read all the bibles since a child

And studied the mysteries of all their trees

Oak and cedar and palm

Olive pomegranate fig

All descendants of an apple seed

But they only led me to a cross

His idea of love finally

Orchestrated as a single note ringing

When you strike the trunk with a mallet

A wooden stump on a barren hill

Or that white pine hanging from a cliff

Half-dead half-green

Greener than green has ever been

The perilous lives of trees

Who end up in a blossom

Beyond Valentine

Will I be a murderer and thrive

Or a servant who can barely survive

Or caught between the two

Tetter from side to side

Will I find a family of theives

Or thrown down on my knees

And choked or shot or get

Lost among my options

I watched a seed float on the breeze

It looked alive and wilfull

Searching for a place to settle

I followed it for miles and miles

It led me on a merry chase

Beyond Cain and Abel

Forgotten Valentine

If you put it that way frankly

If you tell me it's all

Very simple just listen

If you break it down again

From the beginning for me

Piece by piece I can

Get inside you maybe I can

Feel and understand

The outlines of a plan for us

What you had in  mind

Half a secret to yourself

When you said just trust me

Would I make you up and then

Just forget you love of mine

Roaming Valentine

He sucked at sports

When he was young

Preferred the lake to sit

For hours reading by it

Or roaming the city streets

Entirely on his own

An old man in the disguise

Of an uncomfortably young body

From the first day he figured

There was something out there

Across the lake behind the faces

In a book or look that would fill

His heart with amazement

And prove he was no stranger

None's Lover Valentine

A call from None

What does None

Have to say today

It doesn't leave a message

And I don't pick up

Which says it all

None's non-commital

Echoing my hesitancy's

Dim hope to call back later

I don't want to talk

About it right now or listen

To None go on and on

Who could get a word

In anyway with nothing

Left to say

A Theory of Knowledge Valentine

The dead he knows

Are wiser than him

More useful more

Capacity for living

In a deeper way

They have gotten behind

Experience and thought

To the place they come from

Which they grow to become

They are not strangers like him

To one another despite the initial shyness

As after a long uncertain hospital stay

They come back home to regale us

With their survival and narrow escapes

Tortured Valentine

All week he has been tortured

By the thought of an old woman

Excreting in the street one night

He stumbled on her coming home

He knew this was happening

But not to him disgust

And sorrow turned away

Did he behold her angel

In his tortured thoughts

Turning his back to her

Waiting asking can I help

Her angel answering with a sigh

And think about all the others

Neither your sisters nor brothers

Evening Valentine

He sees now what morning is 

A metaphor for you

And for another morning

Just like this one

It stands between

Two other mornings

Whose hands replace

All other mornings

And who strive toward

The same afternoon

All that any morning

Can accomplish you are

A darkness to him

Brimming light so bright

Returning From Heliopolis Valentine

Do you remember when you were four

Our long escape through the desert that fall

The strange excitement of the caravan

Sleeping fitfully under the stars

Our arrival at the already ancient city

Finding that little blue house and field

Behind the crumbled temple of the sun

The forest of the obelisks was gone

But the soul of Plato could still be seen

Pacing or sleeping under the palms

When we would go for walks

Breathing wisdom right out of the air

And then later on the hard trek back

So looking forward to having friends again

And to building a new kind of life

Phone Call Valentine

Later when she was older

His mother was a greeter

At a small funeral parlor

She smiled in a friendly manner

Though her heart was full of terror

When she led them to the door

And said she would see them after

But she wouldn't be going in

The dead body appalled her

She confided to the guests

One too many times 

So they had to let her go

Which she couldn't understand

She wept more than the grievers

Embarrassed to take her hand

Better Valentine

In some prior life he must

Have paid the highest price

To deserve these beautiful days

Not without their own delusions

To compensate for the loss of heaven

For which he settled on the earth

Maybe the only place 

That would take him in

Rejected by every other planet

Apprentice his stubbornness

To the great Lord Courage

So he could dream in his old age

Of coming better days

In Which He Begs the Future Valentine

The time will come

When the woman of wisdom

And the man of love

Will dissolve into one

Self-generating person

After the long back and forth

The time will come

When there's no more hiding

Except as children play it

Much will have been settled

The days brighter the nights darker

What was matter will finally be forgiven

But the long beaches will survive

Veteran's Valentine

He tried to keep a doctor's distance

Once he saw the world was sick

From his own disease he learned

How close to get to a diagnosis

Without turning the heart away

He lived every life he treated

In the firm knowledge

It was his own he felt

How to be nothing 

But someone else's 

Flesh and blood

How to hold the magnitude

Of healing in his hands

Our Town Valentine

When loosey Lucy and hairy Ahry

Ran into the world to play

Wasn't it to escape their arguing parents

Weren't they both rejected as kids

Peculiar and fierce and brilliant

Twins stuck together at each other's back

Each plotting the other's surrender

Everyone knew them in the neighborhood

All their enemies were their friends

Until the day they left town

One to become a famous doctor

The other a great singer and actor

I've kept their autographs somewhere

In centuries to come

They'll be worth millions

November 9th Valentine

He likes to attend the fall 

Conference of the gnomes

Under the dying lantana

The ceremony of the seeds 

Being carried to their tombs

The unveiling of the Theotokos

The chanting of the drones

And then everything hurriedly packed away

Nothing emptier than an empty room

Where some mystery has been

He likes to come early

To watch the gnomes assemble

The king and queen carried in

Down the long dark corridors

And sit long after to remember

Up North Valentine (for Mary)

Earlier every night these nights

Following us around

The stars come to Arizona

To rearrange what's falling

As they must everywhere

Trying to get their story straight

From Michigan they stretch out

The absolute to the breaking-

Point and then turn up here

Hardly the worse for wear

A wizard in the woods up there

Sends me instructions and a map

That tells me what I'm seeing

Children playing on the shore

Venus still moving toward us all

 

Lasting Valentine

Flowers come before animals or minds

They flow out of the sea of gemstones

Where the original fire is trapped

Ridiculous but colorful

To be worn or cast off

The world's first words

All vowels in a drone

Outlines of some personality's

Peculiar thing all its own

Some kind of justice for us

That the most fragile and forlorn

Be the sign and seal

Of what will last

Mysterious Valentine (for Jess)

The mystery of the desert rose

That most surprising flower

Is that everything she touches

Turns to gold around her

She has the kind of power

That seems able to create its own

Conditions for survival

That have little to do

With where she finds herself

In the land of rattlesnakes 

And lost seas this time

Or just waiting to spring up

In the right dead heart

That could be yours or mine

Already Valentine

Those birds were already there

Swirling in the stucco air

And what looks like a sturdy bridge

Is really the back of a snake

Among waves and hills rising

On a day that's still to come

The wall holds the scene for it

So there's no need to paint it

The sun passes over of course

Bringing its ruins and palaces

Back into motion again

But those birds were already there

Coming out of nowhere 

On wings of attention

Pretending Valentine

If you be Jacob I'll be the angel

If you be Hiram I'll be Solomon

If you be the shirt I'll be the shoulders

It won't always be this easy

As when you hid from him in shame

Your unsolved crimes fictitious names

Dividing your life into halves

Exposing its failures and lapses

But if you be you then I must too

Just in a different version

Don't worry it will only last

For a few blinding seconds

What never seems to pass

Left Behind Valentine

I suppose I could squeeze the planet

Into my schedule a half-hour after lunch

But when did we put the earth into a home

Early onset of dementia or is it us

Who have lost our minds

Who insist upon falling apart

Who wake up not knowing

Where we are or where we've been

When was the earth ever not us

As if we could go our separate ways

As if we were merely tourists

Trampling the ruins and temples

Of a lost people a forgotten tongue

As if we would never return

This Time's Valentine

A conspiracy of desire

Led to this fire in the mire

Where we camped out for a night

Where we stood love on a ridge

Among desolate things looked over

The one thing we had come here 

To accomplish in a moment

So secretly prepared

Through many lifetimes

Would not slip by unnoticed

This time would not be

Forgotten lost to us

We would be young again

And this time eternal

Walking Valentine

He dreamed he was still walking

In the garden in the early afternoon

Considering that scrumptious apple

His beautiful soul was offering him

Lead us not into temptation

And yet you did just that

Weren't we still children

Sexualized before our time

But we had tasted beauty once

As an animal that lived in us

Or a plant that would return

Like a goodness after a long absence

And we would not let you again

Get away with it dear snake

Dancing Valentine

My angel keeps rescheduling

My death and then forgetting

To tell me about it

We dance around the very idea

That it matters in the least

If I show up that day or not

Or postpone it yet again

The appointment will be kept

All that's left to be done

Will have to wait in line

While they scan my passport

Ask me where I was born

And the purpose of my visit

As the secret service arrives