Thursday, March 31, 2022

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

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

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

Tuesday, March 29, 2022

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

Monday, March 28, 2022

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


Sunday, March 27, 2022

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

Saturday, March 26, 2022

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

Friday, March 25, 2022

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

Thursday, March 24, 2022

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

Wednesday, March 23, 2022

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

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

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

Monday, March 21, 2022

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

Sunday, March 20, 2022

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

Saturday, March 19, 2022

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

Friday, March 18, 2022

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

Thursday, March 17, 2022

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

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

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

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

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

Monday, March 14, 2022

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

Saturday, March 12, 2022

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

Friday, March 11, 2022

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, March 10, 2022

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

Wednesday, March 9, 2022

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

Tuesday, March 8, 2022

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

Monday, March 7, 2022

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

Sunday, March 6, 2022

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

Saturday, March 5, 2022

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

Friday, March 4, 2022

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

Thursday, March 3, 2022

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

Wednesday, March 2, 2022

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

Tuesday, March 1, 2022

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