Some Trees Valentine

On some bare trees

The flowers burst out

Before the leaves

An extraterrestrial

Advance over the old

Way of doing things

They reassert

The urgency of infancy

As if the soul came first

And the body as afterthought

Merely trembled in the branches 

As if the medicine arrived

Before the sickness

Only spring can cure

You Ask About The Weather Valentine

Nothing more spiritual than the weather

Which liberates or confines us in our place

Nothing more alive more vigorous

Even when it's creeping past

Gathering or scattering birds

Bestowing or withholding light

Clearly a creature with a sense

Of humor and a real understanding

Of the sufferings of the world

I mean the way it so accurately

Reflects our moods and aspirations

Back to us in lightening and clear skies

How it reminds us nothing dies

That won't return tomorrow

Untranslatable Valentine

When one language looks at another

Let's say Chinese and Lithuanian

To see what sounds it's come up with

For the same thoughts so each thing

Has hundreds of words in the world

Each word shaping the mouth it speaks

As a certain atmosphere of place

Conjures up its own articulation

The way wind shears rocks and

Water returns to a dry creek bed

Each word with its own language

Its unavoidable accent and sighs

So we are spoken as much as speak

Heart-Scammer Valentine

You wake me at seven

To tell me I've won two million

And a new Mercedes Benz

You must think I'm a fool

That my mind leaps at the money

Which I'd love to give away

You remind me of a romance

That took me for a ride

A merry-go-round of fictions

But boy how you could dance

So now I know the scam

You taught me love is not

Truly and for real

Something you can steal

Saved Valentine

I keep a bank in the shape of the Buddha

Where I can throw all my loose change

One of those clear glass golden ones

Where I can see it's only half-full

Still not enough coppers or dimes 

For that promised cruise to Mars

Where they say the Buddha was sent

After his final trip to earth

It seems we're not the only planet

In need of a shepherd or diplomat

Someone who can speak the truth

Though it takes years to hear it

And many lengthy wars apparently

Peaceful under the bodhi tree

Close Valentine

His insight was hidden

In his attitude to those around him

And in the way he formed his words

Two clear groups emerged

Some who could love him

And some who wanted him dead

Which is so ironic in light

Of his purpose carefully withheld

To take the world by storm

On the page his words seem stern

But I try to imagine them spoken

By a voice of reassuring calm

Not as you might talk to a child

To soothe his fears but straightforwardly

As you would speak with a close friend

Ash Thursday Valentine

One of the sweeter gifts of getting old

Is that you start to see how the future

Doesn't really flow out of the past

But is its own bright river making its way

Youthful and brilliant and jostling

From the opposite invisible shore

Urgent with new impulses

Swirling into eddies and strange twists

You would never have imagined

Until it merges with the past

Which usually tries to drag it down

Right there where there's a waterfall

The roar of the one pouring into the other

The silence of the present moment

Where you are neither old nor young

What We'll Do Valentine

The world is damned today you said

When you meant to say damp

Your tongue slipped out

How you were really feeling

That's a little harsh I said

I mean I realize it's raining

Which you have to agree

Is some kind of blessing

At least the green thinks so

Even if a bit too optimistic

But don't be that child I say

In the back-seat pleading

Are we there yet repeatedly

Tell me what we'll do

When we get there

When love proves true

Take Me Valentine

The first dimension is the shadows of birds

Gray blurs on the sunny patio floor

The second dimension is the birds themselves

Reddish-brown in the leafless trees

The third dimension is their invisible aura

Stretching out all around them now

The fourth dimension can only be imagined

All the way to the ninth symphony

Sung by a single bird

Slowly unwinding the world

Perched on the finger of God

Take me it sings as you

Have given yourself to me

And let the spring begin

To The Well Valentine

Soon after the wine was saved

The best for last at the feast

The loaves and little fishes came

A boy with his meager catch

Who just happened to be there

So much leftover even enough

For our still hungry mouths

But what moves me even more

Is that young woman who hurries past

Every morning to the well and waits

For him to join her there

To share together those first drops

And drink their sorrow away

The Last Of Us Valentine

The world is such a serious place

Though still not serious enough it seems

And graver and graver events occur

And good things happen every day

The patient refuses half his medicine

The diagnosis staring him in the face

So I wonder if that's the plan

Since nature is already dying

To raise up another kind

Of human being letting the old one

Die as all things physical must

So we can finally see the angels

And the devils in our midst

And our real life dawning

Cliffside Valentine

The sun italicizes a single flower

Leaning from cliffs above the sea

All that's left of Italy in Monterey

Such are the waves of its memory

Restored and blurred restored and blurred

A morning cafe's whispered words

The journey through a spring of woods

Lunch by a galloping stream

But these are not Ravenna's stones

Where that singular figure dreams

Held up and tossed by screaming gulls

Here on the other side of the world

With its emphasis on a persistent flower's

Eager shattering of clouds to blue

Heart Day Valentine

My heart is a foul-smelling flower

(or a rose without a scent)

That calls the midnight moths

To come and drink with them

My heart is a drunken sailor

Walking perfectly on the sea

Mistaking it for eternity

Its exuberance won't recover

From the sunlight on the water

My heart knows how to drown

And how to settle up with time

My heart keeps one eye open

Even sleeping in the ground

Earth's Valentine

Earth is the only place

I've found so far

Where I can be myself

When I lived on Mars

I was never at peace

And Venus was a madhouse

Of hot and cold desire

And though I still enjoy

Driving to Mercury in the spring

To visit the ruins and tombs

There's something irreplaceable

About the earth that makes it home

That even after horrendous journeys

Or is it because of them I'm not sure

That only here does love seem real

Nothing More Valentine

Even these stones gathered in a bowl

Cannot contain their secrets long

And of course the amaryllis among them

Standing tall and fearless is forced

To bare her beauty to us all falling apart

Her four brave trumpets collapsed balloons

Making death look foolish and small

Forgetting the seeds she's buried inside

The dark passages of her reappearance

Her roots slow suffering among the stones

Her thick leaves licking the passing light

Straining for another victory of her own

Nothing more feeble than a flower to reveal

The secret immortality of the earth

Ferry From The Vineyard Valentine

Aren't all small islands mythical beguiling

As soon as we see one we want

To go there is it the allure

Of an independent life separated

From the mainland where we feel

Only one out of so many group souls

While out there the forests and rivers

The secret beaches and radiant nights

Might return us to our original selves

The ego that owns an island

But not quite yet itself

The world invites us to be greedy

Foolish and vain or merely good

Itself an island still to be explored

Thirsty Lives Valentine

We owe our other lives to those

Who knowingly lived them for us

So we wouldn't have to go through

All they had to endure and overcome

Those who worked for better things

For us but felt their lives were wasted

When they saw what waited down the road

They knew it was never about survival

The immortal ones had settled that

Tedious argument long ago

So when he sat down with the Samaritan woman

They drank to life together and the sorrow

Of self-discovery happy sorrow

Grateful they took back their lives

And urged them forward to tomorrow

At The Gate Valentine

There is another man like me

The mailman and the morning moon

He follows up and down the streets

Unpaid bills and shiny magazines

Half-read and thrown away

And you can tell what house

He's at in the neighborhood

By the dogs growling at the doors

Reminding us that he persists

Somewhere out there delivering fate

In little envelopes and humming

To himself as if he himself

Had gathered all this knowledge

Of the world and left it at the gate

For us to sort through searching

Searching for that note from you

Our Other Soul Valentine

On the avenue of the arts these days

Music takes the sunny side of the street

It follows us everywhere inescapably

Reminding us we have a soul after all

That sings of another kind of feeling

For another kind of world

The one that came before words

And goes on long after them

Which our tongues remember

Tilting into those first notes

Thunderous chords at the arrival

Of the descending gods

Or the trembling of a childish reed

That takes and lifts our listening along

Kaspar's Valentine

When you try to trace the hidden history

Of this simple boy this guileless man

You come upon this panoramic

Painting of the last two millenia

Strolling the museum of your mind

Where the artist has collapsed

Great empires to a few dark lines

Scattered randomly but giving back

To insignificant events their glory

And there imagining your surprise you see

His life unraveling before you stark and charmed

With all the power of a fairy story come alive

Monsters poison magic bread a pure heart

All it takes to raise us from the dead

Turned Around Valentine

Left to myself I would not become myself

I would be fine I guess but meaningless

Like this hungry starling intelligently leaping

On my green and startled lawn

Clutching some midnight still some rain

So much to me in that leaping

With my own hands I've removed

My similarly hungry heart so it can do

That hopping he does that jive that joy

Because one day you saw it thrashing

And urged me to lift it out

You who live with the sun

Beating soundly inside you

And your heart flying freely about

The Science Of Beauty Valentine

Tell me full moon in Leo strolling by

Is your beauty truly won or merely bestowed

Where would you be if the creeping sun

Did not restore your ugly soul

To borrowed brightness 

You grudgingly dissolve

In the old stories we return

To your landscape of utopias

To your forbidden forests

Before the earth rejected you

Though you still claim to love her

Passing back and forth

Tonight I hear your lion's roar

At my front door

But I with beauty sleep

My Sophia Valentine

First I get quite warmed up

Sitting in the sunny air

My morning ablution

Wiping away my spidery dreams

Then the cat in the shady chair

And I switch places where

In the warmth she thoroughly 

Brushes her silvery hair

Then quietly falls asleep while I

Grow more attentive and awake

Waiting and watching for a woman

Who at this hour sometimes passes by

My tangled yard on her morning walk

But usually I just catch a glimpse

Of her purple shawl as she breezes past

Her eyes hidden her smile uncertain

That once bestowed the world on me

Assigned Valentine

Just as I arrived on earth

I forgot what I was doing here

My screen-brain froze and blinked

And a vast empty space opened up

In which everything was starting over

But gradually I could unravel

The child I was into his later years

As an archeologist does charred bones

Of his own former life a slave

In time it all came back to me

The long years of studying the clouds

The ceremony of my assignment

The same as it had always been

Just remember to love the earth

Candlemas Valentine

Stand with me my angel of light and love

Fill me and flow through me

Guide me and protect me

Just to imagine is enough

The mystery of your presence

How hard you must suffer

Days and nights of endless chores

Just to afford to send me

To the best schools and places

Where your reverence shames me

Your faithfulness inspires me

And even so I set against you

So much obstinance and pride

My well-constructed darkness

Your light in which I hide

Buddha's Valentine

I think something of his Buddha-nature 

He saw inside every tree and cloud

To sit in one place and look out

And behold himself arrayed

And knowing he'd never be back

In a physical body on earth again

He could take his sweet time

Kissing each thing goodbye

It must have been then he realized

He could see the object of his love

Approaching to receive his love

There is that final intermingling after all

When we become what we love

And find it's Love itself