Not A Better Valentine

There is this perennial misconception

That we are better than our sisters

Or better than anyone for that matter

How we worry into competition 

The Hundred Years' War reduced

To televised athletic matches

How fact proliferates into fiction

No matter how far back we go

Who knows what really happened

We're left in a state of stupefaction

How strongly what's unconscious builds

The world we barely know

At any moment what we're doing

When we get up and go

My True Vocation Valentine

Gustav Mahler was my father

We had many a feisty quarrel

Over Brahms and common morals

He wanted me to enter law

Or architecture or biology

But all I felt was music deep

And so I wrote it in my sleep

Indelible super-symphonies father

You would have been proud to conduct

If I could only have written them down

But the audiences weren't ready yet

Apparently and anyway I was out

Of paper and of ink and would fall

Back to sleep hearing those sounds

For which the world will have to wait

Presence Valentine

I wish I had been there with you

With real presence of mind

When you let go of that last breath

And not standing there stunned

In total denial it was like

You got up out of the bed

And rushed out the door

Before I could ask you where

It hurts or are you afraid

You were my first experience

Of dying and of living

And for both I buckled

To my knees while you

Always punctual and eager

Headed for another beach

Patched Valentine

Among our worst illusions

When we wake up each morning

Is the sense of helplessness we can feel

Either unacknowledged or overindulged

But illusions lead to real experiences

If not from their origins in dreams

Then in their physical world consequences

For instance if you see what's not there

Or fail to see what is matters

And what if at fourteen you get on

A misdirected train of thought

And spend years exhausting yourself

Over a few wronged feelings

Is the journey only wasted

If you don't come back

With your good humor intact

And your patience needing patches

Farm-Raised Valentine

The straight and curving rows I watched

Laid down in the black and empty fields

By my farmer neighbor time

But his name was Vern short for Vernal

I suppose because of what he called

Up out of those black and empty fields

Of rye and wheat and corn

Where I saw only individual lives

In the traffic of perennial towns

Vern loved his land easily

I could see that from my window

I just stood there like a year

Stuck on summer but drawn back

To those black and empty fields

Fathering Valentine

Mostly I remember the elm trees

That lined the road to my grandparent's house

Was there ever a more graceful cathedral

Nave of greenish-golden light

The Celts felt they only grew

Near the entrances to the underworld

And conveniently for me and them

Just a short walk down a cemetery

Where the ghost of my uncle priest

Slept under his stone but rose

To talk with me when I would visit

I was sixteen and full of questions

But not the one he wanted to hear

For which he's waited all these years

Mothering Valentine

As a treat when we were small

My mother would slice a banana

Into a bowl and pour milk on top

With a little sprinkling of sugar

And smile and announce

'One of Grandma's favorite recipes'

Her mother passed when she was

Just sixteen making her the mother

Of her four sisters and little brother

Grandma must have been in her thirties

When her only son's life took her own

But something of her sweetness

We could taste and tears

Where nothing else of her was known

What Blind Man Doesn't Want To See Valentine

Or could it be that what I see

Is what is blinding me

To all that lies behind

What if I have only a little kindling

Of mind to warm my heart

A few stray clues I can

Weave together into a plot

I can still stare at the stars

Until they carry me up and out

Past the ruined hospital moon

And the circle of caged animals

Careful not to wake them

To a little park I know

Where what is human is divine

Mercury at Equinox Valentine

Those who still long for fairness

And an economy of forgiveness

And are willing to work for it

And those who can't get past themselves

Or past religion or politics

Fighting for themselves alone

Turning their backs on the future

How well can you walk backwards

Is it to make another run at it

Having tamed the uses of the self

With one death-defying leap

Or a fall of trust might work

Where you surrender and let go

Hoping the universe will catch you

Theoretical Valentine

When light broke down

Weeping its many colors

Wasn't it simply filling in

The darkness all along

Where it could rest alone

But then it stumbled

On the earth where blue

And red could find a home

Flowering in blood and bone

Who is the I of colors

That pure white

Invisible but bright

Who returns every morning

And enters every night

Ownership of the Clouds Valentine

If you consider the clouds

As the sky's etheric raiment

Up against the blue day

Or the darkness of its soul

If you can hold them as memory

Where talent and trauma

Are given free rein to roam

Bringing hurricanes and towering

Pillars of fire and light

If you think of them as having

Only one good reason to exist

To give us a daily picture of the whole

A reflection of what just happened

Out of the depth of our souls

We. Somehow. Love. Valentine

In his first book entitled 'We' 

He uses the word 'I' a lot

Until he struggled out of its trap

And felt the oneness of the world

Which led to his second smaller tome

Called 'Somehow' in which

He spends years trying

To replicate the same process

In more personal terms but

With the same unequal success

Old now he readies his final work

The ruffling of a few pages

Some with only a single phrase

And wants to call it 'Love'

Lost and Found Valentine

Given the ways it all hangs together

Is it really so surprising to discover

That the ones who came before us

All those pioneers and explorers

Warriors and serious scholars

Are we ourselves returned revised

To find our spirit never died

But found its way back somehow

To another body another life

Not just a template of the one before

But with the stamp of something new

Unprecedented and unique

We ancestors of the future

Whose lost heaven we restore

A Matter of the Gods Valentine

How far back does Persephone go

Before she pulls away from us entirely

And we can see she's just a scaffolding

Torn down to reveal a pyramid

Of light from which she radiates

Out of so many possible worlds

Why does she choose this impossible one

Of stops and starts and stops

Settling for such a little time

Suffering in such a little space

Trying to cram us all in

We immigrants on a leaking boat

Doesn't she believe we're coming

To rescue her if we can only

Keep ourselves afloat

Portrait of Valentine As An Old Shrub

It looks like two small birds

In the sun-impaled hibiscus bush

But it's really only one moving very fast

From branches to the cups of new-made leaves

Where maybe a drop of water waits

Preserved like a purple pearl

Maybe this is its true function

Not the showy blossoms of its moods

But a simple offering to the birds

In the dead heat of summer

Why does it need to bloom at all

Except to celebrate itself at last

For having understood a little

A necessary song-bird's thirst

The Seven Stages of Valentine

Its first appearance is in the human body

When you reverently become aware of its

Delicate construction and sound beauty

Infusing you with a certain energy

As if someone just handed you your life

As if you could be trusted

To balance two hearts at the same time

And not looking down cross the abyss

That separates the you and the me

Our panoramic history painted in sand

So persistent it becomes in the end

You can sometimes find its form

Thrown up on sunlit beaches

In the memory of a stone

Yorick's Valentine

Honestly dear Hamlet you get it all wrong

It's to love or not to love

For which being alone exists

But you didn't dare to ask

That embarrassing question

Your bright intellect and sad father

Kept getting in the way

And when you came back to us

As Young Werther and the project

Could no longer be avoided

Were you pre-disposed to feel

Its promise came too late

So now when you walk

Our noisy streets at last

With your skull and bones

In your hands be honest

For once and admit it

You still don't understand love

Her Name Was Sophie Valentine

Every morning more to know

Every night a further dream

The same routine never the same

How many chances are we given

To draw a perfect circle

Or a single straight line

My first teacher said to practice

With my finger on the air

And let my breath erase them

Once they've entered my brain

And go out into the garden

And find them in leaf and stone

All you'll ever need she said

To become a human being

Impromptu Valentine

Out onto the stage she waddled

A beautiful ring-necked dove

The audience hushed at once

In the opera house of the mind

Knowing any move would scare her

She stopped to turn and look at us

And then proceeded to her mark

Clearly aware of the danger

We pretended not to pose

But the consummate artist she was

Soared through her repertoire of coos

With graceful fluttering of wings

And hovering mid-air she rose

In fear and love of earthly things

No Life Valentine

No life on earth is horror-free

We've all somehow made sure of that

Some come gift-wrapped with bows

That take a life-time to unpack

A single golden needle's eye

Some scrounge the stinking garbage heaps

To earn barely enough to eat

The cruelty our lives impose

On one another still not grasped

The soul solution comes and goes

The sheep harvested by the kings

Sleep in peace in military rows

Dreaming of their return as kings

Who may feed their sheep who knows

Waiting Valentine

I'm waiting for the rain to stop

So I can go out and pull some weeds

But really I'm enjoying it too much

I hope it goes on all day and night

I'm waiting for my mind to stop

Complaining about all it needs

And all that must be done

Despite the excuse of the rain

Much more intelligent than me

Bringing life to all it feeds

The weeds and dripping tree

Always choosing the better part

I'm waiting for the rain to stop

And plant a rainbow in my heart

To Everyone I've Known Valentine

Did I overdo it

And go too far

Did I fall too short

And miss your star

Did I only do

What I wanted to

Unmindful of the effect

Did I underwhelm you

By being too direct

Did I for my little

Too much expect

Whatever all is true

I don't intend to forget you

Whether living or in death

Speechless Valentine

All summer long the cat sheds her coat

She doesn't like when I call her mine

Or when I think I know her name

But I'm the one who has to go around

Picking up tufts of hair for months

Until finally come October

She's back to skinny and svelte

Like the first day we met

Just as the cold nights of November

Begin to fill her with regret

She ever discarded that cozy pelt

And must start to knit another

She stares at me with life in her eyes

And dares me to explain it

Karmic Valentine

He brought a nail-gun to the party

She brought an ode by Holderlin

He nailed the world together for her

She took it all apart

He said you've ruined my art

She said you broke my heart

Forty years later they meet again

Accidentally in a park

He was reading Holderlin

She was wearing a grin

How unoriginal of us he said

To repeat the original sin

But just in the nick of time she said

To finally let you in

Light's Valentine

How do the colors of the stones

Become the colors of the flowers

Become the colors of the birds

The colors of our animal eyes

What the stones tasted around them

So the flowers could begin to breath

So the birds could hear and see

And the animals perceive

The colors of their souls

All the while perfecting the human eye

Does its color matter anymore

If green that it sees only green

With so many colors yet to come

Until the seeing heart is seen

Brunetto's Valentine

When I was released from heaven

For hours my mind was a blank

I could barely remember anything

My name or circumstance

I lay in a field of purple flowers

Until I remembered how to think

My way back to summer

And a sense of my own

Insignificance I could cling to

I admit midway my panic

At the nothingness I felt

But stood my ground

And knew it was even here

You could still be found

Proven Valentine

In my daily quarrels with myself

I'm reminded of the promised rain

A great gray cloud approaching

Hovering trying to make up its mind

To restrain its urge to fall

Or do what it's come to do

And mean it after all

Did you know they've proven

Half of the soul doesn't even know

There is another half

Which hovers over its

Anxious incomprehension

And tries to calm its fears

If it would only listen

And let it rain or not

Riddling Valentine

It shares with mathematics

The integrity of objective truth

And with music the harmony

Of all the parts and accidentals

It goes right to the heart of surprise

Like a check-mate or a friend

You didn't see coming

Right laughter that lives in order

And the loss of all illusions

It opens a path to a practical life

The perception of an invisible mountain

Your thoughts are free to climb

The majesty of a moment

At last in your own right mind