Stolen Valentine

A two-year old puts on a hat

And says now isn't this cute

Not as cute as her saying so

An old man on the street

Is telling a story to a young woman

Who is laughing uproariously

I wish I could hear what he's saying

South of here a mourning dove is cooing

Two long notes and then a short

What is that in Morse Code

I'll have to look it up

But then from the north comes

The echo of its mate

Five faint notes asking

If it's all too late

Mid-Winter Valentine

On the last day of January

I saw the first honeybee land

On a new yellow dandelion

Two fools coaxed out too soon

With still crushing snows to come

Or had last year left them behind

For a few warm days to find

Mid-winter summertime

Both too early and too late

But boy that bee was hungry

And girl that flower gleamed

Even if only for a few hours

Even if it was only a dream

Accepting and defying fate

My Animal Life Valentine

My neighbor's chickens

Sound the alarm

Another holocaust in the barn

At 3 A.M. that coyote came round

To my door we stared at one another

Through the glass he wasn't

Asking for directions or trying

To defend his actions

Or begging for forgiveness

He just wanted me to see him

And to know he would be back

For me at some uncertain hour

But when I tried to invite him in

He smiled and turned and ran

That Sound Valentine

My teacher was once a siren

Howling through the town  

Her curriculum of doom

Her lightening quizzes

That left each of us alone

Shaking our pencils chewing our knees

When I was ten a boulder

Grazed my head like a hand

Brushing back my hair

So now every moment I hear it

Feels like an emergency of hope

Being rushed to the hospital

Hope laying on a cold table

Hope climbing back up the hill

Lest Valentine

Death our boon

The Father's gift

Lest we forget

Our first home

Vain the wish

To live forever in matter

When death is so much stronger

Out in the whispering morning

Where the dead gather for prayer

Trying to comfort the living

I have come upon their camps

Heard stories by their fires

Where death chokes on flesh and dies

And only we seeds are left

Waiting for life to flower

Again Valentine

While the living word decays

In a graveyard of cliches

Haunted by a glorious past

While the same five books

Are thrown into the same five fires

Refusing to be read at last

While our bodies and our souls

Still recognize themselves

In a few consonants and vowels

While we're still posing here

Taking pictures of ourselves

Let me adore you once more

Let me sing your genius again

Or what was living for

Messaged Valentine

I heard a cawing in the sky

And when I looked up I saw

Black wings too large to be a crow's

Outstretched and circling widely

In the up-drafts and every time

It would orbit round to the place

Closest to me though it was still

Pretty far up there it would caw

Four times at me I mean

Who else was listening

To this circling and cawing

That went on for several minutes

Until my neck got sore

It all seemed so deliberate

Personal and secretive like

A message slipped under a door

Late Epiphany Blues Valentine

Blame and fame and shame

The three main stages of growth

On earth to be followed by

A fourth or more still to come

In which we will have swallowed

The world and come out

The other side there's just

This little stone in the works

You must put your heart into it

And push it right through

Your head until it starts to see

Who we really are

We wise men

Still following some star

Skeptical Valentine

He asked me if there could ever be

An understanding of the world

Shared by everyone and then

He told me it already exists

And looked at me with his best

Rumi smile I wanted to kiss him

For his confidence but he went on

Insisting I look more closely

At the intricate human heart

Or the delicate spiritual brain

And tell him they didn't have a chance

Of bringing us all together

In every single being

Woven Valentine

What does the rain really symbolize

In this fading tapestry of the gods

And over there those fields of snow

Still falling what is it meant

To convey if not surrender

The long laying down of arms

After their final battle

Over the myth of man

You have to imagine the original colors

When it was first unveiled

In the great palladium of the air

For them to come and stare

You have to try to feel again

Their deep sorrow and relief

Falling as snow or rain

Unspoken Valentine

Sometimes it takes my angel

A long time to come back

From a hard night of dreaming

I get up early and wait to hear

Her footsteps down the hall

Her bright smile or weary frown

Carrying in the dawn

We sit and watch and cannot

Speak while slowly the light

Re-enlivens her and her arms

Enter my arms her body

Encloses me as far as she

Can reach and every day we make

A little progress towards speech

Convicted Valentine

First you have to figure out

If the gift you bring

Is something leftover 

From another birthday

That will fade and need

To be replaced by something less

Ambitious more courageous

Or if like a pearl it can

Flower accumulating luster

Growing stronger and clearer

An arrow straight out of a cloud

That descended one day

A gathering of glory

Just enough to be convincing

Which Mountain Is The Mind Valentine

Our current home is divided

Between deserts and mountains

On one side real winters and springs

On the other hot endless summers

Except how the pines up north

Are the direct descendants

Of our waving southern palms

I haven't figured out yet

How something gets to be

Where it makes the most

Of the weather around it

On the shoulders of boulders

And the weaving sands

Where the mountains stand firm and alone

And the deserts fold their hands

Something Valentine

Doesn't dreaming prove the soul

Leads a strange double life

In which the things unnoticed here

Seem magnified out of all proportion

And given a whole new credibility

Until the soul dissolves in riddles

And the reality of another world

Clearly more alive than this one

Something surprising about our true

Character seeps through each night

Something we keep trying to remember

Or struggle to forget

When we return shaken or amused

To another ordinary morning

Unanswered Valentine

How you answer the questions

Not what you say or mean

Which is often a mask

But the gestures that reveal

What kind of thinking

Goes on in that heart of yours

Which looks at me and looks away

Right now it's raining but the sun

Tries to explain its reasons

For falling across your face

With the same hand you use

To brush your hair away

And yet it all makes sense to me

That you remain a mystery

Thinking Valentine

If thinking is light damped down

Then the sun must be love positioned

At just the right angle

To create a miniature masterpiece

Of itself in each part

Intelligence falls in the air

Both manna and dust

Accumulating on my books

But when I retrace their steps

I end up with a single vowel

The holiest word I

My little precipice

On a hilltop in Ephesus

From which I can feel it all

Biographical Valentine

Even death must have had a birth

A parentage somewhere a beginning

A struggling youth before it reached

Its majority among us

Ripening into its convictions

Adapting its different religions

Finally begging to be rescued

From its sad misunderstandings

There must have been a time before

The body hardened offering death

A new sense of purpose

A rite of passage just as there

Must be a time when even it

Will have faded into history

Streaming Valentine

My theory of my feelings

Is that they're like a little choral group

Always playing in the background

A band that rehearses

Two or three times a week

In the back of a church or store

I mean they move with the music

Unaccountable streams of inflection

That work magically on the body

The smile rushing up from the pulse

The scowl settling down in the bones

I go to all their concerts

Sometimes I'm completely confounded

By the new music they play

Sometimes I'm completely found

Foolish Valentine

What made me foolish

When I was younger

Is not the same foolishness

I feel now I'm older

It's deepened into

The entire earth

For which I don't feel

Responsible enough

And yet remain

Insanely optimistic

Not about its prospects

Those are doomed

But it's longing

To go on being born

Stuck Valentine

Two young children

Fighting over a puppet

A piercing scream fills the place

And we're all just stuck there

Watching the scolding parent

And the comforting parent

Try to figure one another out

Those who don't trust empathy

And those who feel there's no

Other way the screaming world

Can survive than equally

And not as puppets

In which a fearful hand

Pretends it is not lonely

Maybe Valentine

Exhausted by the plague and wars

I read about other wars and plagues

That there has never been

A whole century between them

Since we took over on earth

Creating the picture

And then erasing it

Waiting to see what

Lives behind it

Maybe we're just starting out

To think I like to think

About the peril we're in

No I mean seriously reverently

Maybe we're just gathering the strength

To take on ourselves in the end

Hungry Valentine

In last night's dream

Of fifty years ago

You came back to me as a child

When we lived alone on the farm

When you were teaching me

How to be a father the best

Job I've ever had but

In this dream you were hungry

And I offered to make you

A grilled cheese your favorite

But you just hugged me and fell asleep

In my arms dreaming

This very dream

I had last night

Another Valentine

The uncertainty of the outcome

In each individual case

Whether the ball is caught or dropped

Or even ever thrown in a life

Whether there was too much light

Or too much darkness that night

Flashing in front of the bus

Climbing the perilous mountain road

The survivors clutching the dead

But this still isn't the end

They both get up and walk away

The living back to their tightropes

And the dead to some inner space

Where they grow toward another day

Old Love Valentine

Love starts out greedy

And a little too needy

Obsessive and regressive

So rushing on you pull back

From the shattering effect

Love wants to come first

At everything and fails

Ruined by its perfectionism

Or doomed by its precipitativness

How could you love that

You wonder years later

How could you not

The day love gets old

You'll know it got no wiser

I Can't Decide Valentine

I know when I'm starving

And scanning the menu nonchalantly

For the most delicious thing

So I'm going to let you order for me

Your collective wisdom coalesce

Into the feast of your presence

Whatever the chef has on hand

Lentils with half an onion

Over a bowl of saffron rice

Would be nice with a little wine

To set the tongue going

On and on about forever

Tasting the time together

All the way down to our souls

Surviving Valentine

My cat loves me too much

She's either loving me or sleeping

And she sleeps too much

She's like a pillow on the couch

I rest my head on until she rises

And tries to sit on my face

How much love is enough

To live on comfortably

And to be able to travel

But she was born in an alley

And learned the hard way

The only way to live is to be loved

And there is never enough of love

Lucky me now is there

Epiphany Valentine

Sneaky snail-track contrail

Glitters and disappears

The blue goes back to blue

The ground stands still

Though we know it's whirling

A little like a drunk

In a dream you woke from

Sweating shaking

Almost a melodrama

If it weren't so tragic

Of a phantom chasing you

Yelling no, no I won't 

Hurt you I just want to meet

And catch up on your story

Willed Valentine

If I think of it I can feel

The pull of my will

Holding me together

In a loose configuration

Of unresolved wishes

And firm intentions

I see it as a vast lake

The way it just sits there

At the bottom of awareness

Offering boat rides

And threats of drowning

Always ready to give itself away

To lie still and let the sun

Have its downward way

Proud Epiphany Valentine

To have been in the world

Several times and not

Fully appreciated my arrogance

And blundering purpose

In existing for you all

I'm not sorry I couldn't

Stop staring at your beautiful

Faces each one a secret

I would like to penetrate some day

So clutching and ambitious

I could have been a musician

Even now I feel myself

Lining up my songs

Still carrying a torch for you

Craving Valentine

This morning fairly bounces into my brain

Like two eggs boiling in a pot

My troubled thoughts of you 

My beautiful thoughts of you

Eating my breakfast alone

Watching birds out the window

Delicious panic of winds

Catching them mid-flight

So they turn and go the other way

That kind of clever windy day

Full of silences and twists

Bare prodigies craving to be born

And groceries to be carried home

And lips waiting to be kissed

New Year's Valentine

When I hear the little iron bell in the yard

Which only a certain velocity of wind

Can lift into its tinkling dance

I want it to rush right through me too

The light stirring the warmth and cold around

Until the movement makes a human sound 

Like the failing and quickening heart-beat

Of an embryo struggling to be born

Right here in my own backyard

Think of it at my late age

With an infant to care for

And carry around

All I love these early days