Where Am I Valentine

It's where my life domestic-comic

Intersects the incoming cosmic

On that bridge between the two

River rushing underfoot

Fires burning overhead

Where one can have a second thought

Not I but one with all the dead

The world lets us in too far

Yet everything depends on supper

First and last the river hums

That wants to carry me away

I stand admonished and amazed

In the kitchen of my days

Cutting carrots singing praise

What Does It Want Valentine

When I see the eye of the moon

Has opened up completely

And leans a little further in

As if for a better view of us

Blinking through shores of clouds

To mitigate its blinding gaze

I start to sense a great being

Whose blazing eye this must be

Some dreamer fully wakened

Looking around an unfamiliar room

Searching for its other eye perhaps

As if it left it here in the world

Pouring through every wave and town

Stopping every woman and man

God The Cat Valentine

Isn't God as tender as this cat

Who lays her cheek against my leg

And sleeps and snores like him

But still won't let me touch her

I know he can take on many forms

More ambitious than a cat

But something about her purring

Keeps him coming back

To stretch his legs

To leap and pounce

And after a long and

Unsuccessful hunt in the yard

Come home and rub his head

Against my foot circling me

Begging for his food

Paul's Birthday Valentine

Because we shared coming into this world

Into our strange and confusing holy family

Because you were the first infant I held

In my arms and I was only seven

I think I felt then so many

Years later looking back

A strange mixture of pride and envy

From the beginning and when

We grew up and went our ways

Meeting again only in the middle

Of our lives my talk turned into rancor

And after that we hardly spoke

For thirty years I think I felt

You were living the life

I had imagined for myself back then

And I resented you for it somehow

The life I had rejected for myself

And you into the bargain

But that was all a big mistake

Simple kindness tells me that

And your extended hand

What Enlightened Him Valentine

Because he foresaw

We'll all end up

As buddhas whatever

Time it would take

He treated everyone

He met with deep

Respect and tact

Bowing inwardly

As if to say don't forget

Where you're going

I hold you in the highest

Esteem your victory

Already won and look

You can almost taste it

Buddha Onboard Valentine

What if all babies are buddhas

Like the one following my gaze

Asking who are you as I pass by

And why are you smiling at me

A look of wonder about to cry

Or maybe a grin of recognition

Floats up from another world

The crease of a smile in time

To catch its blessing on the run

And carry home that image

Seeing everything for the first time

Face before it becomes a face

Yes why are you smiling

Try to be more like me

Crying and crying for this world

Unsure Valentine

When they finally dropped me off

On earth it was in the middle

Of a quarrel my unwed mother

Had to kiss my father off to war

Inside her we took the train

From nowhere north to the busy city

Where we were quite alone

In the hospital for wayward girls

Far from her embarrassed sisters

So I took my time arriving

While she wrote unsent letters

To him and the war got worse

She was only twenty and I

Unsure I was a blessing or a curse

Still Valentine

When I read

How he was betrayed

By the bad

Behavior of his friends

I knew it was me

When I noticed

Only one or two

Followed him

To the other side

Of his death I knew

It wasn't me

But still I feel

His shoulders under me

And know he carries me

To someone I must be

Days Like These Valentine

When we're apart

I start to believe

In a spirit world

A few hundred miles from here

Where you are living now

It's strange how souls

If we subtract the body

By distance or by death

Grow closer imagining one

Living inside another

Listen I wanted to tell you

Something important but it

Can wait and anyway it's

Late at night where you are now

In the memory of my dreams

Death Valley Days Valentine

Midsummer respite

In the seething desert

A human eighty degrees

A few days grateful cloudiness

Leftover hurricane's

Furtive rain from the coast

A breeze of drowsiness

In which everything is waking

And starting to breathe again

Intermission in summer's

Grand opera to carry us

Right out of time and space

Which will soon resume

Smiling parenthesis in which we feel

We might really belong on this earth

Prompted Valentine

If all that happens here

The gods have first lived through

And earthly time and space

Are one long deja-vu

If every life resolves to solve

Some grievance of the dead

And inch by inch we turn

To find it waiting up ahead

If rhythmically we stall

And start again like planets

Looking back on other worlds

In the middle of a vowel

Suspended waiting for our cue

Mustn't it all depend on you

Making It Back Valentine

A woman out walking in the wind

Her dog along the river

Finds it hard to look

Directly at that water

Furtive glances shot

Upstream against it

Not to go under

She struggles with the urge

To leap such as one observes

In lovers heading toward disaster

But she stops at her favorite spot

Gathering herself together

And out-stares that river

Doggedly all the way back

Is That You Valentine

Is it the karma of flowers

To suffer through to their colors

Is it the destiny of beasts to bear

So much sadness in their gaze

Is it really the hummingbird's mission

To carve a chink in heaven and dash

Off as if it's nothing

Is it left to the magic of dreams

To rescue our thinking

From this phlegmatic world

And restore our sense of flight

Is it not you who opens

That little door-way beyond death

To touch and console us every night

Remind Me Valentine

I am so dense sometimes 

Only the next day do I think

Of what I really meant to say

But I note it down anyway

Practicing the perfect response

When you remind me of my failures

Going back over how I let you down

Because someone else let me down

Or some such back and forth

And now you want me to believe

No failure can defeat us

Look you say the well

Of love is inexhaustible

From which we drink our fill

Embattled Valentine

Embattled as I am

With my own inner nature

Trying to calm down and stay sane

Entrusted as I feel

With the whole natural world

In which I see myself reflected

The dreaming minerals and lazy

Waving plants the thoughtless

Roaming animal I can be

Encouraged as I often am

By the quiver of your presence

A single leaf moving in the yard

Which must absolutely be there

For it all to make sense

Assumption Valentine

There are still some places

Where they burn the fields of spring

And plant new seeds in the ashes

Is this what we are doing

Burning cities and forests

Throwing another log on the flames

In a twisted kind of self-

Immolation scorching the earth

So those who die in fire

And even the animals and plants

Might be the seeds of hell

Grown into paradise pastures

Called back in another thousand years

To reclaim their native ways

And sing their ancestral chants

Always Valentine

When I see the Verdin visit

The purple flowers in my yard

Which by the way just appeared

One day and spread like weeds

When I watch her poke about

Chirping and feeding on something

Bugs or pollen or drops of dew

I remember you asking me why

Is there always a bird

In your poems how old

That bird must be today

But love now you've gone

That bird keeps coming back

Showing me how to carry on

We Chose Today Valentine

Many nights I have that dream

That starts out fresh and calm

And ends in some catastrophe

I find some new idea there

I'd never think of here

But when I try to bring it

Back with me it crumbles

Papyrus in my hands

Or dark police pursue me

A thief's car chase back

To the crash of waking

Somehow I only find myself

At dawn or twilight

When there is just enough

Light and darkness to hold me

In a momentary peace

Don't Fail Me Now Valentine

Because I doubt I fear

Because I fear I hate

These three dragons I

Myself create

Terrible menagerie of things

I've said and done

I call them to me

And try not to run

I call as well

My Virgil soul

To strain me through

The sieves of hell

The courage that will lead me

To be whole and well

In One Day Valentine

Let's go back to the south of Sweden in 1576

When Tycho Brahe was building

His island 'Castle of Urania'

The first and last of its kind

Until Kepler came to mute

The music of the spheres

Into a hurdy-gurdy song

And the stars were given numbers

Having run out of the names of gods

Shakespeare was still a young man

And wars were everywhere in Europe

In one day the cosmos became a machine

Spawning endless new machines

Among which we now count ourselves

Between Valentine

Do we become our animals

Or do our animals become us

Does the animal in us admire

In them something we've lost

In being what and who they are

When I was a child I thought

The dogs were the men and

The cats were their ladies

It was medieval of me

Spinning a myth of marriage

Another playful religion

I was trying to leap over

That gaping gap between

Animal and angel

Lives And Words Valentine

Every day I try to read

Someone's biography I pick

At random from historical

Or contemporary obituaries

But it's like when I read

The dictionary searching

For the origin of a word

It only leads me to another life

And I have spent the morning

Absorbed in someone else's words

I think we come in cohorts

Each era nothing like the one before

So at first we don't recognize one 

Another and have to be reminded

Of the others always around us

Anecdotal Evidence Valentine

My friend a family therapist

Drove north to spend four days

Searching for his mental health

He took his wife with him who

Had a broken foot in a boot

He took his old ailing mother

Who couldn't stand or walk

And his two beautiful daughters

Four and five and all their things

And of course he had to take

The two dogs one of whom

Was sick and pooped all over

This was as far as he could get

Telling me what happened smiling

Except for the roadside madhouse they found

Where the air was fresh and cool

And how one night it actually rained

And they all lay out on the grass

Feeling finally some peace

Until the gardener sent them packing

And incredibly they all climbed

Back into the car somewhat healed

And somewhat still half-crazy

This Is Just The Beginning Valentine

Because we couldn't face the abyss

The abyss has come to us

While brave archeologists keep digging

Brushing sand from the eyes of the dead

And rocketing telescopes keep probing

The penetralia of endless darkest night

But it's all post-partum now

A child has drawn a line

And we stand amazed

To find ourselves released

On our own recognizance

Afraid hateful full of doubts

Each having to go it alone

At least for a certain distance

If only to prove one can

Migratory Valentine

If you find a murderer

In your family tree or a slaveholder

Or even vaguely some royalty

Or stop to visit an ancient grandmother

A witch of Endor and her brilliant

Daughter Sophie still surviving

In their cottage in the woods

And manage to penetrate their fairytales

Do you finally get to that mountain

Grove of reckoning where your

First family gathered

For their next migration

Hoping you would save them

Climbing on your shoulders

Together Valentine

Hey I'm over here at the grocery store

What do you want me to get

Hey I'm over here among the stars

What do you want me to get

Spring greens and a few avocados

And whatever you want for supper

Bring me that blue galaxy you found

And some word from the Kyriotetes

Hey I can't carry that much

And the store is so crowded

Just grab what you can manage

We'll make a feast of light and salad

As much as I can salvage

From the garden of the night