Monday, January 31, 2022

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

Sunday, January 30, 2022

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

Saturday, January 29, 2022

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

Friday, January 28, 2022

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

Thursday, January 27, 2022

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

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

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

Tuesday, January 25, 2022

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

Monday, January 24, 2022

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

Sunday, January 23, 2022

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

Saturday, January 22, 2022

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

Friday, January 21, 2022

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

Thursday, January 20, 2022

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

Wednesday, January 19, 2022

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

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

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

Monday, January 17, 2022

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

Sunday, January 16, 2022

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

Saturday, January 15, 2022

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

Friday, January 14, 2022

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

Thursday, January 13, 2022

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

Wednesday, January 12, 2022

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

Tuesday, January 11, 2022

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

Monday, January 10, 2022

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

Sunday, January 9, 2022

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

Friday, January 7, 2022

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

Thursday, January 6, 2022

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

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

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

Tuesday, January 4, 2022

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

Sunday, January 2, 2022

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

Saturday, January 1, 2022

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