Invisible Valentine

What can you do with the eyes

But wash and watch them

How the light flows in and out

Birthing equally into the blood

As into those new leaves over there

And the light I send to them

From my ideas of what light

Can possibly conceive

Hiding as much as it reveals

Of the darkness of my inner life

Aren't they struggling the eyes

Like burning coals to light

As much of the world inside

That the invisible grow bright

Afterwards Valentine

I dunked a stale cookie

Into some cold coffee

But I could not revive it

The corpse of a cookie

That once had a life of its own

Among other yummy cookies

Still warm from the oven

And this coffee all the way

From Guatemala only

To glaze over unfinished

In the cup you sent me

From North Carolina

But that's how much I missed you

Feasting on lonely leftovers

Here in crummy Arizona

Always Valentine

One long contrail running

North to south

And another long one

Running east to west

So they cross alone

In the bluest sky

And it just happens to be

A good Friday afternoon

Does this mean the end

Of suffering as we know it

Taken up in the clouds and dissolved

So we can move on

To the real resurrection

Always tomorrow's dawn

Dogwood Days Valentine

I need my opera binoculars

And about three more weeks

To catch the birds coming back

And the sylphs who emerge

With their first pale green

All wrinkled and furry

The drops of blood falling

On the whitest flowers

Winter's ghosts brilliant

In the sodden woods

Until all the birds speak at once

In their separate languages your name

And the sun rides up

To rest on your lap my head

Wherever Valentine

It's always the same boarding a plane

Feeling everything familiar fall away

Suspended mid-air among strangers

Becoming anonymous and thrown

Up against the sky vulnerable

And alone as a bird or cloud

Each of us strapped in our thoughts

Sleeping or watching a movie

Or non-stop talking and laughing

It all feels like a kind of dying

I listen to Stutzmann singing Handel

'And soon thereafter, wherever you are,

You will see me come flying to you

To embrace you ever faithful.'

Back Then Valentine

I just wanted it to stop

So I locked the door against you

But you pounded so fiercely

I had to let you in

Broken and crying we stood

Holding one another

Until the shaking stopped

How could you you said

When you know how much

I need you now

You showed me the rose

Of my life you said

See I have carved your face

In the palm of my hand

I will not forget you

Forgive me I said 

I was hurt and lost

Let's try to love again 

No matter the cost

Impressionable Valentine

After several false starts

Earnest but not forceful enough

I managed to wrestle myself

Upright from the floor

My exertions had been mostly mental

I pondered my motivations

And the serious responsibilities

That come with standing up

Which can only lead to walking

And falling back down again

But why restrict my options

To crawling and whining

To sitting tied to a chair

When you I wanted to impress

I could just run to over there

Some Souls Valentine

Some souls are all will

The worker bees and drones

The how without the why

Busy until they die

Some souls are all feeling

The heart is queen

And passionately she rules

At the center of their world

While other souls are all thoughts

They lay the honey in the head

And rise and swarm

Restless for another home

How fortunate this whole constuction

Hovers above a field of flowers

Unfinished Valentine

Out of a large unfinished book

I was allowed to read only one long chapter

Taken from somewhere I think

In the middle of the story

So I couldn't tell if it

Was just a comic interlude

Among a series of wild adventures

Or the point where the central

Character has figured out the plot

And taken up the authorship

Of all that must inevitably follow

Or write a whole new age

In the fable of so many I's

Wandering across the page

Between Valentine

I think there are only three protagonists

In the world and two of them

Are sworn enemies of the third

Two lies that want to divide

The world between them

One a dreamer and one a schemer

Who deny any middle way

Any common ground between

Pure spirit and simple matter

As if there was only night and day

One life one death to chose

Forgetting the one who walks

The razor's edge between them

Freely holding sway

Exiled In Heaven Valentine

Your body may be elsewhere

Long since living in the breeze

But here they placed your stone

In the city where you died

Having written your masterpiece

Which somehow every year grows

More necessary to acknowledge

If only for its resonant

Architecture of a clearer life

The key it leaves we've lost

For us to find under your stone

A map to the door that takes us 

All the way back to heaven 

And all the way through hell

World Valentine

Every so often I get up

And go look at the world

It makes me a little crazy

As a child or helpless parent

All the plans it's up to

That keep me awake at night

Marveling and worrying

I go where it's snowing slowly

Or sit on some morning beach inspired

Listening to the mothers of the world

Getting their kids to school

Uninvited I attend as many funerals

As I can think of before I sleep

I feel you will take my life my friend

I know our friendship will never end

Leaning Valentine

The lovely fanciful and strange

Geometry of the waves out there

The booming along the icy shore

Below the cliffs our own abyss

Between paradise and here

Where we take our daily stroll

Where only the imagination's real

As a hand to kiss and hold

Against the cold that stiffens us

And would eat our breath

Will swallow us whole

If we would let it

Leaning homeward through the snow

As if we believed in death

Staying Valentine

My dear Lord and I still relate

On strictly formal terms

And try to remain objective

About one another and the world

I love he treats me like a dog

Who leans into his master's words

And takes me on long walks with him

Where he lets me off the leash

He knows I love the passionate grass

And the freedom to run at will

Which a confined life craves

With only your instincts and bright

Brown eyes and slobbering face

To feel what it means to hear

Him tell me to sit and stay

Slow Valentine

Between the mineral and the moral world

Where we work in deep watery mines

Where the shining gems are dug

After their long infancy as dust

Their slow curing and maturing

In the furnaces of time

But doesn't a sapphire decide one night

To change its life and crumble

Back to its primordial light

Before it can be seized and worn

On some ancestral crown

Or wed to some newlywed's finger

When so much deeper into light it wants

To run and take us slowly with it

At Least Valentine

Best pulling on a day or two

After a good rain and the ground

Forgives your weedy sins

And you can grab them by the roots

Before they bloom though some

Have already run to seed

Picked till the bed is bare and clean

Except for a school of poppies

Red and salmon swimming

Upstream in the sunny air

At least something can look perfect

And you can stand and stare

Your knees sore and ancient

After so much prayer

Stirring Valentine

The cold speaks only one solemn word

That would pronounce us dead

That could be why the snow pretends

The stillness of a corpse

To show us how to rest content

With all this fallenness

Rehearsing the funeral of the world

And yet the body stirs

As we sit and wait

It rolls over in its sleep

Only dreaming it's dead

At least I felt it when I woke

Green entering my bones

Infant sun stretching out its hands

Sometimes Valentine

Sometimes I let my body become

One large ear sitting in a chair

I try to hear how far out

Listening can stretch even to you

Past traffic and alarms and dogs

Out past where the trillium

Whisper under snow and the mouse

Emerges from his hole to find

The white owl waiting

Soundless wings to take him 

Out past fear and longing

Until hearing itself becomes

A kind of singing along

To an orchestra of stars