A Radical Departure Valentine

Sometimes these days I'm stopped

In my tracks just standing there

Immovable for a few moments

A stone in a stream letting it all

Wash over and around me

Life and time and my death go by

And it changes nothing this sunny day

It's as if I can feel myself

Melting and merging into things

A train or a bridge or an empty street

Like that one in Samos we walked all night

Because in a flash it all slips past

Veers off into some eternity

While death swims just upstream

Waiting at some harbor with you

Hepatica Valentine

To go from mineral to living color

From pebble to leafy petal flesh

Is it not an epoch's journey

To just show up one day

The rush of wind embracing

The miracle of your face

Waiting for your name to arrive

In no one's forest garden

After so much melting and groaning

Passing in and out of terrible fires

And silent centuries of ice

To bloom for a couple of hours

A mountain dissolved in your scent

Your secret promise kept

In The Time Of Elm Trees Valentine

Seventeen is the cruelest year

A rubber band pulled taut

Full of what you don't have

And empty of all you want

That summer I caught an endless bus

To a tiny North Ontario town

Where my ancient grandparents

Gave me a room in their crumbling house

And left me free to roam around

The fields and the next-door graveyard

Where their son the priest was laid

Grandma spoke hardly a word but

Grandpa played his fiddle for me

Ardent tunes from his Irish youth

And asked me what I wanted to be

I lied to them and said a priest

When a poet was the truth

I Don't Know Its Name Valentine

All summer long despite

The constant riveting heat

Purple flowers no one planted

Have spread in my narrow yard

It was the wind or the resident birds

Or seeds carried on my shoes

Tall large clumps the pools

Of sun have randomly fed

Kept constantly in flower

A pale alchemical purple

Waving above a sea of green

All if you look closely in

With a gleaming yellow center

That illuminates their sorrow

Earth's Valentine

The most curious thing about

Living on the earth today

Hobbled as we are by bodily misgivings

Besides the question of what it's worth

Is the unavoidable sense we're ever

Only aware of hardly half of what's

Right there in front of us

Stunned by the beauty of nature

We take the signifier for the sign

And get caught up in personal adventures

And the false science of history

How long will it be lost to us

The earth behind the earth

If we look further in

Where only spirit is

San Miguel Valentine

The San Miguel is a river in hell

That runs through deserted towns

Once flourishing with busy sounds

It starts with the naked bones of a saint

Exposed at the bottom of a pit

Who left behind forgotten now

A clear map to heaven

But once every ninth or eleventh year

He brings a heavy week-long rain

That turns the desiccated canyons

A startling resurrection green

A stolen paradise that lasts a season

When the dead return to the towns

To sing and dance in the ruined cathedrals

And tear all sadness down

From A Tower Valentine

It's clear when I look up

At the stars' blazing clusters

Of light like cities seen

From a plane at night

There must be other civilizations

Living there beings of light

At their most basic and profound

And it's clear the earth is just

One member of a scattered family

Even if the youngest one

Thrown out when her mother died

Putting everything in storage

And it's clear there's much

More darkness than light

But not clear which is winning

Cold Valentine

I left you stranded

On a distant star

With visitation rights

Just so I could drive this car

Speeding through winter nights

All the windows open

I left you for another

I would soon abandon

I left you pounding on the door

While I pretended to disappear 

Was it out of love or fear

I left you your favorite guitar

And a scribbled note

Please take the garbage out

Just Asking Valentine

What if suddenly this reliable earth

Evaporates under your feet 

And all the lights go out at once 

With only a lukewarm breeze 

Wafting from Saturn's shores

Breathing you slowly in and out

Will you have saved forgiveness enough

To spark a signal fire out of the nothing

Your are on that dark and shoreless sea

From what's left of your ashen heart

Will you have finally made a friend

Of that shining brother who stands

At heaven's only door or will

He send you back for more

One Valentine

Through whatever adumbrations

The world has led to you and me

So we can trace our bodies back

While our souls evade heredity

Some great grandmother's pale eyes

Recycled in a runaway boy

Who reenacts the promise

She was forced to destroy

Our souls that pull us forward

While our bodies trail behind

But this particular you

And this particular me

Our lives so intertwined

Divide equally between us

One destiny and mind

Unsolved Valentine

A body burnt beyond

Recognition in broad

Daylight and no one noticed

A human skull in a box

Of toys donated to Goodwill

Poisonous mushrooms popping up

Between the bright lantana flowers

Something rapping on my window

At two in the morning no one there

What am I to do with these

Edgar Allan mysteries

But turn the page read on

The clueless bodies pile up

The killer strikes at dawn

Late For Life Valentine

Her due-date's running late

Under the great dome of her belly

Her son's still staring at the ceiling

Where the frescoes of his life to come

Are just receiving the final touches

And the scaffolds are being taken down

Until finally his anxious guide and him

Are left alone in the vastness

Of the light of a single flame

His guide urging him to come

Look they're locking up the doors

But he's still taking pictures

With his phone to show

Them all when he gets home

Wilderness Valentine

How to get the story straight

In the land of if and but

Where there is nothing definite

But even more convincing doubt

How dam up the tide of hate

Would it only gouge a lake

To cover up our big mistake

What happened here

In that first year

How is it now

Only a few can hear

And yet the call stays clear

Only answerable

By love or fear

Because Valentine

Because I can hear them

They must be singing for me

A small nestle of finches

In the shedding tree

And that it matters not

To them I listen

Strangely caught

It matters all 

The more to me

Their song goes on forever

For pure pleasure

Until I start to hear

Buried inside

Some dark urgency

Some flight by night

That speaks to me

Recovering Valentine

A patch of skin flayed from the head

A transplant from the hips to fill it in

I hope you were under for all of it

And wake now with some effective meds

In your own comfortable bed

I'm sending my angel to sit with you

Until I can come myself

And a playlist of healing sounds

Some popular some Bach

Do you know Ravel's piano concerto

Second movement where the soul

Lifts out of the body and cascades

In a silver rain of stars as if

Music might make us whole

The Gift Of Extra Years Valentine

I rub my arm across my brow

I stare at purple flowers

I cut my hair shower and shave

And read content for hours

I wait for the ring-necked dove

To land on my neighbor's roof

Her coo is a kind of reprimand

Though she keeps it sweet and brief

I live in a luxury of time

Remembering all my debts

To friends pleading for forgiveness

And burying my regrets

If once you've really loved I find

There's no such thing as loneliness

Sweeping Up After Valentine

Last night the other shoe dropped

Heavy trees uprooted by high winds

An ochre dust covering the city lights

And then it rained for the first time

After several months of searing heat

And just yesterday I was reading all

About Proserpine the Goddess Natura

And the fairy-tale of her flight

Her slow fading from medieval minds

The forgetting of her holy rites

And now where she stood and spoke

A smiling weatherman predicts

Another rain will pass us by

Though the sky stay gray and thick