Calling Valentine

Fall's judgment brings my death to me

Laid out in skeletal snow

Where fleshy summer hung

But there's some blood left in these bones

That only a spring can know

And there's a wind that draws me out

And another working from below

Filling my lungs with heaven and hell

So I have my own life and soul

Breathing the living and the dead

I sing a wandering song

And call you to me

Little things of earth

It won't be long for long

Your Death Day Valentine

First we made the mineral earth

Condensing it from our warmth and delight

Breathing into it ourselves the plants

So when the animals in us emerged

We would have some competition

But the seasons arrived before us

And the earth took up its own life

Separating from us at the same time we did

And we were left on-lookers

At all we had made out of love

At least we still told ourselves

It was love in our lonely moments

What else could it still be

That moves us to exist

Morning's Valentine

There is always something so heroic

About the morning for me

Whether it rushes over us

Or idles at the gate

Nursing its mythic proportions

A god we take for granted

Unless he stares us in the face

Scolding our limited vision

With his force and grandeur

A child who wants to know everything

A survivor who has swallowed darkness

And come back with the only flint

Still dry in his pocket

Eager to burst into flames

A Puppet's Plea Valentine

I have a hardly heart

And an almost head

And sometimes I can sense

The musical parts

That might assemble me 

The soul of a hand

That lifts me upright

And gives me words to speak

On a cardboard stage

And makes me joke and dance

Or explode with rage

All things I would not do or be

If you my truly life

Could just take hold of me

Breakfast at Golgotha Valentine

This sudden finch who shares

His morning feast with me

Of dandelion seeds for the picking

His red hopping around among the

Yellow heads and gray hardly a week

Between coming and going

As if their only purpose was

To feed the restless finch

And do me the honor

Of being his silent guest

Even if around us stand

So many gibbets with their bodies gone

And the finch what's left

Of the blood that's fallen

To feed the hungry ground

The Fable of the Rainbow Valentine

A few balmy thoughts

Was where yellow started out

A sanguine stare

Spreading itself over the sea

Ripening into orange and red

The best of friends slowly

Falling out with one another

What might have happened

If blue hadn't suddenly intervened

Flooding the earth with green

Turning the whole thing around

Forming an ephemeral bridge

Over the violet rushing water

Where so many come and go

My Memories of the Future Valentine

In my memories of the future

Strange how the past grows clearer

And my sense of safety in the world

Runs to hide in what I know 

About myself this cast of players

This crowded family living

In the subway under my ribs

These children I have witnessed

Passing through my spine

I know he has surrendered

His whole will to the world

And settled himself equally

And confidently in all its parts

How else could we be free

Past Valentine

The thing about 'evil' is not

That it will destroy itself

Through what is inherent in it

But that it could take us with it

Into its longing for nothingness

Which it already does it seems

To some extent or another

While the thing about 'kindness'

Is not its size or demeanor

Or its willingness to matter

More than material things

But that it speaks to something

inherent in the 'heart'

Past all imagining

Windy Valentine

Milking a metaphor all morning

I chanced upon a symbol of the moon

Holding the sun in its arms

Wearing a starry crown

In an ancient book of charms

A glyph that could lift the dead

When spoken bravely to the wind

By those who knew the sounds

To cast into the dark and cold

Words that were never written down

But mouth to ear were memorized

So when you stumbled and fell

You could speak them to yourself

And break this earthly spell

The Chaste Tree and the Passion Vine Valentine

The secret trick to life

Is you have to grasp it

Even as you let it go 

A simultaneous gesture

That practice perfects

So it can hardly be detected

How far back in time these leaves

Have to unwind to find

Your childhood waiting

In the warmth of the first sun

How can the eyes look outward

And inward at the same time

And not burst into birds or towers

If you have to ask the question

Old Valentine

A simile for brother

When we stand back to back

This old pomegranate tree

Spring's double amputee

Still wears its uniform for me

Of green for coming battles

With my sharpened shears

Who knew that blood could bloom

Into sacrificial flowers and make

It seem a happy parade

With a roaring exultant band

And floats of a hundred colors

This last one carrying its victory

Still blooming back from the wars

Spring Play Valentine

Intermittently through the play

A couple standing in the wings

A baritone and an alto interrupt

The action on the stage

With a brief and wonderful duet

The players seem genuinely surprised

As if this wasn't anything arranged

And yet so stunned by its beauty

They easily forget their lines

And have to be prompted to their parts

And resume as if nothing had happened

The realism of their dramatic situations

Carried onward by that song

Interpreting Their Scriptures Valentine

They say that evolution

Is a kind of liberation

From the formless light

And then a re-absorption

Which breathing right reveals

To be just another flourishing

They say the heart is like

The queen bee in the hive

Of the mind and the only thing

That is really evolving

They say if you sing this text

You will see a vision of light

The sun of a whole new day

Beauty's Valentine

Beauty is not always honest

Beauty is not always good

But beauty is always free

And freely she comes and goes

Preferring to take her chances

With impermanence and time

Than marry rich eternity

And never change her mind

Who beauty loves is freedom

As God's first-born child

Whose grace brings her to blossom

And whose wisdom keeps her wild

What good is truth what truth is good

Only freely beauty can decide

The Dead Don't Sleep Valentine

I turn over the page

Like the sheet of a bed

Where my body of words can rest

Or toss and turn pulled down

Into the lands of the dead

Who prove not dead at all

Just invisible behind the wall

Of the world of words

There is a seashore there

Where we discuss the war

Of those who want to build it higher

And those who want to tear it down

And what passes for death

Is just another life come round

Circumnavigating Valentine

When I sit down to imagine the earth

It's not from outer space alone

I picture myself in a surveillance plane

Low-flying over fields and towns

So I can almost see the faces

And be amazed at any moment

At the world we make go on

I like to land at night in a strange city

And walk the streets till dawn

Or on the outskirts of some battle

In the field of an abandoned farm

Where I can faintly hear the bombs

But in the morning off I fly

If I'm to make it back at all

Hopeful Valentine

I hope I become a child again

Before I enter heaven

But a child who plays an instrument

A fiddle or a plow

Out in the sunny fields all day

A child who can drive to town

To chat among the neighbors

And bring home ice cream

A child who wanders the hollows

Dependent on creeks and quiet

For even the simplest things

A child who says please and thank you

When his angel comes

To take him home

Humbled Valentine

I see the humble bumble-bee

Has emerged from her winter hole

In the old pomegranate tree

And fallen on the grass and died

I wonder what she's left behind

She does not look like something divine

A smudge that crumbles into dust

All last summer I stood back and watched

Her barely air-borne body

Set out with her empty bags

In the early morning haze

And trundle back in the twilight

Fairly dripping with silver and gold

To doze in her starry chamber

And not worry about nights or days

Embarking Valentine

A tiny white moth

Fluttered up out of my lap

I was just sitting there

And watched it rise and disappear

Was it an exhalation of my soul

Another hinge unfastened

Or nature being magical and drole

Like a coin pulled out of the air

By an invisible hand and smile

What if such things are always going on

And we only rarely notice them

Like yesterday a tiny ship

Flew up out of my head

Who knows for what voyages or end

Hearing You Call Valentine

I told you coos the dove

Somewhere just north of here

Or it could be I need you

There is a 'd' in there

Which makes me wonder

If the animals will learn to speak

On time to save us from ourselves

But why learn to talk and sing

If no one's listening

A prophet among her people

A Slavic woman told me once

You are either one who has ears

For death or one who has ears for love

Quoting some silent dove

Thursday Valentine

Out of the measureless light

That flows down on us endlessly

Out of the measureless darkness

That takes us into its sleep

After the gods have decayed

Into the words for months and days

And we have survived our many lives

We come to this particular Thursday

After which nothing is the same

What is it about Thursday

That it could become

The first human being

A feeling for the world

That takes the place of the gods

Spent Valentine

I spend most of today

Thumbing through yesterday

What just happened

The pages are already smudged

And the words I lined in yellow

Don't sound like the words I said

So I don't just repeat myself

But look up to find

What to do with this new blue sky

How to take its hand

And write down these words to you

Before the ink is dry

But sit and listen to a dove coo

And watch a mockingbird fly by

The Weeping Theory of the Case Valentine

Whether one body is unimportant

But many bodies are broken

Thrown up against the wall

Whether one body takes a bullet

But many bodies are exploded

Whether one body flees

Over the last fallen bridge

But many bodies follow

Whether one body is safe

But many bodies freeze

Whether one body can survive

So many bodies left behind

Whether one body will evolve

Out of so many disparate kinds

Looking Into Mary Valentine

Her coat of arms when she had been

A soldier-abbess in her middle ages

Surrounded by her muffled prayers

Might have displayed a greenish turtle

Swaying through her busy days

And up in the right-hand corner a silver owl

Listening all night for her mate

Both painted on a golden ground

With a serious-looking lake in silk

Embroidered between them

Or in a less churlish time a boyish

Ephesian girl tending her father's flock

When she was first learning how

To hold us all in her heart

In and Out of the Air Valentine

I believe the brain is a kind of balloon

Whose air breathed in and out

Floats in a sky of endless ideas

And moods that catch a ride

Thoughts snatched out of the air

That can be put to use

Thoughts that pass by

Hurrying off to someone else

We are the books that will

Have to be written to contain them all

But meanwhile the thoughts are working

On the brain to build a better balloon

One that can leave itself behind

Tell Me You Do Valentine

You do realize here on earth

We are the captive audience of the stars

First the ones that trigger us into

A certain trajectory and form

You do remember that signature

They scrawled on the agreement you made

The pages and pages of fine print

Torn Up and scattering on your arrival

And what about the stars behind the sun

That go on diligently shining

Don't you think they matter

Because their light is small

Don't you sometimes hear them call

Early Days Valentine

A card to John a birthday call to Bernie

A bow to Dee and Mary-Pat

I think of you all just like that

Then lunch with Darren at the best

Burgers in town and a serious talk

Then shopping for salad and bread

And those foaming bubbles

You like to clean so clean

The bathrooms with on weekends

And then home for a quiet supper

And the news of the coming age

On a zoom with cosmic friends

But it's still early days they say

To be so old so young

Ash Wednesday Valentine

The most dangerous days of the year

Stretch out before us like a gauntlet now

Though the streets are strewn with colored trees

And it seems we will be arrested

Any moment for being too happy

The air is so blue and gripping

The death of spring however dramatic

Comes down to its blossoming

The irrefutable calyx and sepals

Once looked at look back at you

When beauty passes you by

Dragged off to face

Another savage tribunal

And to open up the sky

Jade Valentine

Every three months I have to turn

The great jade plant in my window

Completely around so the dark side

Has time in the sun and moonlight

Even a plant has to face the bombs

Always falling somewhere in the world

A delicate operation without losing a leaf

But not so much for mothers and children

I have to tell you world this great jade

Is looking you right in the face now

Its white and green leaves reach

Through centuries its arms to you

I have turned it so it can sing again

Even if feebly its courage song

Only Come Spring Valentine

When you see what love comes down to

Diving deeper and deeper

Into grief and surrender

Taking up its throne even

In the darkest depths

Luminous and inextinguisible

At the center of the earth

Then you know what love is up to

As it replaces the sun

And tosses the moon away

And forges you into a tiny

Piece of gold or emerald

In the dark mines of gods

Riches they intend to spend