Somehow Valentine

He says the gods go on surviving

On the spirit bread we bring them

Our own souls baked and steaming

That aroma in the morning

Their tongues watering for a taste

Of some sweetness saved

Or even a stale crust to chew

But somehow they make do

On our thin earthly gruel

And get on with their daily tasks

Of plowing and reaping

Pushing the chariot sun

Up over their seeded ground

And doling out the rain

Only Today Valentine

When we divide yesterday 

Into tomorrow something

Is always left over

The remainder we call today

A pittance of hours

For our chores and prayers

But how carry over the one

Still living body we love

If only for another few words

Before we fall asleep again

And sail out on eternity's seas

Our dreams' frail boats

In search of something

We can call a soul

Solely Valentine

Tap-tap-tap the flicker's beak

On the door of a dying tree

That opens on a vestibule of blue

A life without leaves to see

One's way back to the trailing sun

But just enough to stand there

Like a naked phallic Greek

Expounding his geometry 

Of light-constructed lines

Crossing one another in the wind

A skeleton of pregnant limbs

Solely dependent now

On the charity of stars the moon's

Slow keening in the snow

Remembered Valentine

I went out walking in my head

Among the waves of words

Written on the stony graves

All my dead thoughts

Turning in their tidy plots

Who fought in heaven's wars

And fell to earth like rain

In search of that single name

Hidden among roses I remember

Planting in another life

Finding only an empty tomb

Still warm from the sun

That filled it with a body's heat

A heart just entering a womb

Egg Of Light Valentine

The almost real and the post-real

The surreal and the plain real

All seem combined in an egg

Dangling above the heads

Of a couple getting married

In one of Raphael's paintings

The critics think it a symbol

Of purity overcoming passion

But I'm not sure it isn't

Something Raphael added

Out of his own second sight

Not a custom of that time

All of his Madonnas are lovers

And all of his lovers Madonnas

All he painted was the light

Unrescued Valentine

I climbed too high

And many books and I

Came crashing to the floor

I lay immobilized

My lifetime's library

Pummeling my chest

One grazed my closing eye

Until all was silence rising

From a hundred sacred texts

It was the end of knowledge

A few broken bones

A few unfinished novels

I couldn't but moan and grin

Watching the dust settle in

I Call Him Buster Valentine

I'm thinking of setting

A mouse-trap for that

Clever cat hiding

Among the branches

Grown too close

To the bird-bath

Where the creaking doves

And eager sparrows come

To drink I have

To cut them back

But that's just one

Of several tasks

I never seem to get to

I say I'm waiting

For my friend to come

On that perfect fall day

To prune and rake with me

To put the garden to bed

And celebrate our dead

And feed that ravenous cat

Double's Dream Valentine

I ran into my double

In last night's dream

We were descending

A set of narrow

Mental stairs together

Him close behind

A large man in black

Hat and voluminous cloak

I stopped to let him

Pass but smiling

Through his moustache

He insisted I go first

So I hurried on ahead

Veritably flying down

Those steps to where

Our train was waiting

To take us through

All night we sat

Trading secrets

And philosophies by morning

We had reached a compromise

He would leave me

His cloak and hat

And I would leave him my eyes

What Valentine

A country can be taken to be

A single personality whose cells

And parts work on mechanically

Somewhere after thirty

The biography shifts

And all that was gained

Or lost in childhood

Slithers toward Jerusalem

Never was a town more taken

Apart and patched together

The city of a personality

A mother and a child

What does the world hate more

I ask you fathers

In Valentine

The why is in the how

The when is in the where

The that is in the this

And I am in your arms

This is my philosophy today

Holding and being held

Its central theme and mood

Of which there is never enough

Good news bad news

Both excuse embrace

Freely given freely received

In which whole bodies

Listen closely to each other's

Hearts thrumming in unison

The grief is in the joy

November Valentine

It's good I have a spare life

When this one has to go

My dreamed me at night

Where strangely I feel

More alive than in this one

And where I wake to a world

Hardening out of that one

It can be dizzying at times

Going back and forth

Whoever I am in my dream

Always seems the better me

Someone I would like to be

More honest and more brave

Fallen but getting up

Short Course Of My Loves Valentine

Mr. Keats and Mr. Shelley

Compose the underbelly

Of modern poetry

They speak again in Yeats

Who looked like Blake

And swore like Baudelaire

Who kept the flame alive

Even as it consumed him

I imagine the poets on earth

Meeting up annually with those

Who go on writing them in heaven

Where they all get drunk together

Taxied home by their angels

Muttering their dreams

Your Valentine

My boundless pride

Is always quarreling

With my inadequate humility

Like anxious parents

Over their restless ego child

Who must be torn apart

Needing them both

And needing to escape them both

But the child must be rich

And prodigal before it crosses

The sixty leagues of love

It must lose all its hopes

And laughter except

This last one you

Still Singing Valentine

Three tasks the heart is gifted

To think to feel to act

And occasionally to sing together

When the spirit lifts its baton

And some new strain dips down

Into the corporeal brain

A gold glimmer come and gone

Of light becoming song

That stuns and thrills

But never lasts too long

But just enough to hear

They're still singing us into being

That whole orchestra of gods

On this ordinary morning

What Fall Is For Valentine

Narrow my yard

Weedy my head

The flowers final hours

My two trees stare

At one another lovers

Tearing off their clothes

Let's make a child

Let's make another world

Let's sink our teeth

In the pomegranate's flesh

And lay our bodies down

Exhausted in the grass

Now we know that death's a ruse

And only love will last

The Phoenix Valentine

The Phoenix is a made-up bird

The fierce head of an eagle

The brilliant colors of a pheasant

The wide wingspread of an angel

Can't you see it's love's emblem

Bathed and burning in the fire

Of its own freeing destruction

Every evening smouldering to ashes

Which the earth gladly accepts

And carries to its central source

Every dawn it's sent

Aloft again however love

Construes it even now

It's kindling its assumption

In your heart's imminent flight

Peering Valentine

On one of the pick flagstones

A cricket is leaping and leaping

As if it was a trampoline

And it a little girl bouncing

Bouncing and laughing

Or bouncing and weeping

I can't tell if it's joy or woe

Thrown off with each ascension

But for a moment they relinquish

Their bodies and hang suspended

Defying the will of the world

A little higher and higher each time

Peering over the edge of something

That feels sublime

Taken Valentine

On this blue morning sky

A child of chance has drawn

Behold a five-pointed star

From contrails and clouds

Slowly forming slowly fading

Each of its lines breaking off

In different directions 

The way a soul falls apart

Disappearing over the entrance

Of a deeper world

Someone has taken his star

And gone back to being

A clear blue sky

Another morning making

Earth's Valentine

Now we come to the part

In the twisting mystery of man

Where everyone meets

Everyone else even if only

In a mute introductory way

After our long divorce

We are starting to come back

To this sweet earth

With fewer and fewer

Misconceptions about what

We are doing here

It's still early days

But darkness can only deepen

Into light what else

Was it born to be

Stillness At Last Valentine

What the gods had in mind

In their enthusiasm and confidence

When they decided to hurl themselves

Out of the darkness of blissful love

And dissolve in a fiery mist

Was us and not just us

Even this day they thought of though

And how far their light could travel

Into falling leaves and dying flowers

Until it reaches the flesh and blood

I get to call my separate self

I turn back to remember

Those first few days of being held

That first sublime October

Boundless Valentine

The sequences of slavery

Are not mocked they fall

On to limbs these chains

No mercy for the blind

The first is merely the delusion

I can rape and kill you

Terrorize you into a submission

So complete you thank me

But there are so many other ways

Of binding and being bound
The appearance of this world

Just the last frontier last gasp

Where freedom takes its stand

In seeing I was always free

Mythological Valentine

The first time I saw the Mississippi 

Was from a hillside above Genoa

Wisconsin on a visit on a whim

To my genius friend struggling

For a place for his brilliance

To land he had found the story

Of Gilgamesh and planned

To make a modern movie of it

He showed me his first magical slides

And played me the synthesized

Music that would accompany them

All I remember is one

Of a wheelchair flying over the moon

Whatever that could mean

He had a flair for irony

A startling wit and a taste

For drinking me under the table

He traveled the country until

We lost track of one another

But then years later he called

Drunk in the middle of the night

Lost and crying incoherently

Until I had to hang up on him

And weep for Enkidu dying

Finding That Book Valentine

I had little time to read

Another book already

Leaning stacks of them

Loomed on several tables

Must-reads before I pass

But as soon as I glanced

Over the first few pages

I couldn't put it down

I felt immediately it knew

And implicated me

In the single most important

Question we all carry

How not to hold my life too dear

How only love can stifle fear

Finally Valentine

With a single unexpected gesture

Surrendering to his sadness

He leaned his head against the wall

Feeling it was all for naught

The one thing he was good at

No longer wanted by the world

Outnumbered by his failures

To have learned to love

When the offer was there

Finally he had come to the one joy

His whole life could afford

And picked up the phone

To call his granddaughter 

Just to hear her voice

Left Valentine

While I slept

A brief rain fell

I'd left the window open

So the room was filling

With the cooling air

Softly prodding me awake

But something deeper

Was pulling me under

And I vainly struggled

To retrieve my dream

We were so real and rushing

To catch some train

Love had just entered us

And then it started to rain

All I Know Valentine

Metal screams at metal

Turned against itself

In the forges of heaven

Actually just across the way

My neighbor in his garage

On the first cool day

We've not bothered with names

But I've watched his wife and son

Grow older with us over the years

He's built a private business

Mending cars and drives around

In his black Mercedes

That's all I know of them

And they even less of me

And screams carried on the breeze

The Happy Debtor's Valentine

Justly my debtors need

My just debts be paid

So they can pay their debtors

But the debt is never paid

More added on along the way

All my life I've taken

Trying to pay it off

Often building to the brink

It can no longer be forgiven

So let's just get this straight

Once and for all forever

You owe me nothing right

And I owe you everything

Across The Yard Valentine

Vatic with a grin

Buddha baby death

Sits across the yard

Nervous as a secret

Shrouded in flowers

We generally agree

On all the details

But he's a little squishy

On the dates

When he signed his last will

He included a codicil

Stipulating preparations

For another fall his final

Burial and entombment

Never admitting for a moment

That had happened long ago

October Mind Valentine

His burial came in the spring

When his body became the seasons

So in the fall you could feel

Him weaving in the air

And you could almost sense him

In the dead leaves lifting

Almost palpable where the last

Flowers embrace the first frost

In love with the earth

As he had always been

I have watched him stand

For hours in a shorn field

His thoughts so still and magical

Even if only in my mind

Dancing Valentine

If these words weren't wood

I could carve your face

On a cane and hobble

Around the yard dancing

To make us laugh

Which is not always easy

To be silly children together

I remember that picture

When you slapped a bunch

Of carrots over my waist

And made me blush and laugh

At the camera's click

'The juxtaposition of the incongruous'

That's what love is

Alexei's Valentine

No one would be more surprised

Than him if he had not returned

To his own country knowing full well

What would happen to him there

He was a person entirely himself

Who must be restless in heaven

Away from all he loved

Remember he left them all

Behind in the end

Left death itself behind

For those devils to test him

Because he thought not much

Of himself but loved his family

He knew he would return

Searching for his own country

In their faces

Two Skills Valentine

Soft blows of a hammer on wood

Tapping it all perfectly into place

My neighbor's always making crosses

Or working on his salvaged cars

Two skills I never mastered

Though I did lease a little factory

Of words on the outskirts of town

Until I filled it up

With useless fictions and had to

Burn it down to stay alive

One bone-chilling night

I had yet to learn the carpentry

Of invisible things

How to set the heart humming

Seasons Of Heaven Valentine

I imagine our earth

Must have filtered down

Out of heaven the heaviest

Silvery pieces of sand

Reflecting everything above

Cascading down to the bottom

Heaven's soul birthing these bodies

From the rain and the mud

Into such marvelous creatures

But it must have been we

Ourselves who were clamoring

To be alive on this earth

As if only those who've known the depths

Could create from bodies a new heaven

Leo's Valentine

When Leo Tolstoy compiled

His own holy gospel

Weaving together selections

From the other four

He bypasses the whole

Bethlehem story the shepherds

And the stars followed

A mother's worries for her child

And at the end there is no

Resurrection no Emmaus

It all stops suddenly at the cross

Was it his melancholic nature

Blinding him to the best parts

The good was it made a small book

Soldiers could carry over their hearts

Ceremonial Valentine

All we know about the past

Might be divided

Between awe and loss

If you look at the hand-prints

Emblazoned on the cave wall

One miraculous event after

Another and another

And at the same time

A skipping broken record

When all we had was our hand-prints

We had to put them on the wall

Where it was not lost on us

You would certainly find them

In the fellowship of the heart

Thirsty Valentine

He too lived in a desert

Where the heat of summer

Can get so intense it starts

To melt the soul

Forests turning into flames

Burning sand with a single lake

Who knew when I got here

Geography was fate

Climate an arranged marriage

Which could be why he

Only spoke of flowers once

In words that sound like

What you might say

To soothe a child

Last Stop Valentine

Having sown themselves

They spread around the yard

But why do I want

To tell you about them

They are just purple flowers

Tall trumpets blaring

Their silence in the sun

Because I know you too

Would admire their stature

And their tact each bloom

The last stop on the road

To the invisible world

Their thin skin separating us

And yet offering us a way in

The Limits Of Language Valentine

Yitcon Stein Victim Sign

Vidkin Stein Vet Constrain

Victim Stain Vince I Am

Drinken Stein Thicken Stein

Rickon Stein Pitkin Stein

Veteran Stein Vetcon Stein

Vilkon Stein Vat Contains

Vidkin Stein Victim Stein

Victor Stein Fit Con Stein

Vector Rhyme Wit Gen Stein

Victor Shaw

The New Eleusis Valentine

I've been reading Plato's Proclus

And the other sacred masters

Alongside the latest poems and novels

Until it's all a fine muddle

Weren't the first hymns

To Chaos and Bewilderment

The god Ignorance

Who is torn to pieces

By the intervening years

Of conscientious study

Of moods and words

Connections we know are there

Now more and more begin to hear

The call of that first human being

Who looks exactly like you

Recognizable in all the stories

Sky Harbor Valentine

I imagine a little bag we all carry

For stuffing things we really need

To hold on to and I don't mean memory

Or maybe it's just a pocket

Where you keep a still

Unwritten note to yourself

Always ready to present it

To guarantee your flight

Or a purse where you know you put

The password somewhere in here

Emptied on the counter

That little bag of necessities

Waste and treasure saved

You imagine will get you on that plane

Invented Valentine

After marvelous encounters

With great personalities

Clearly not all of this world

After long conversations

About why so many languages

Long gone or just coming into being

We finally invented a speech

Of our own an affection

In the air dividing the light

Between us which myself

Would be the first to relinquish

If I can only keep one promise

Let it be to trust you completely

My angel and real friend

If not for my sake then for yours

Not Totally Eclipsed Valentine

The unheard voices of the past

The silent orchestra behind the world

Stone words of the amphitheater

Still as muted roars

The stark cargo of deeds

Stuck just above the horizon

Hope like a blinking child

Your own sleeping in your arms

But he had a solemn voice

That went back to the bards

You could hear the swish

Of dresses dancing

You could feel the breeze

Of it all still happening

Love Story Valentine

In my supposedly October yard

I found the natural world

In a state of humming suspense

Summer keeping its grip

Forcing its flowers

Into a second bloom

And still it dreams on 

Like a sleeper in a house on fire

I could feel the heat of other worlds

Flames turning us into flames

And what if it never ends

Never finds its lover in the fall

Only to lose it all come winter

Cast out here in the desert of desire

Michaelmas Valentine

I'm the same age now

As he was when he received

The invitation to the wedding

Of the king and queen

While I'm still waiting

For a subtle sign or even

A little bit of heaven to open

My cloudy eyes to read

The true history of the soul

He left behind at the center

The vision of Venus sleeping

The pang of her beautiful being

Still pounding in his heart

And what she would say on waking

Birthday Valentine

I dreamed I was sorting things

Long colorful bolts of silk

Arranging them into a display

I had no idea what it meant

Or even if I was getting it right

But I felt strangely content

To have been asked to do it

My assignment for the night

I wondered while I worked

Inventing new rainbows as I went

Hoisting them into place

What festive garments they would make

And if I might one day be

Worthy enough to wear one

Parlay With My Archangel Valentine

When we finally met

Like weary soldiers

Bloody from the battlefield

So I could tender my surrender

After my final defeat

You were firm but gracious

You wouldn't have me killed

But confident in the power

Of your mercy tame me

If I would be tamed

Leaving it to me to decide

To be a private in your

Army of light or a petty

General in my mind

Fleeing Valentine

Reality is not what it could be

It longs for better days

Once a beautiful city

Now a bombed-out ruin

But reality was prepared for this

And fled to friends in the north

Who offered a tiny cabin in the woods

As if reality could live alone

So it fled west to join

Other refugees on a sinking boat

Arrested when they came ashore

Where it settled in for the duration

Where as luck would have it

It was befriended by a group

Of eager children playing ball

Miscellaneous Valentine

I may be an ant before you

But even an ant can cry out

For the resumption of your glory

Having played its part

Sometimes the daughter of trauma

Or the son of a dream

End up in the same poem

Struggling to get out

I have assembled all my arguments

Against you world and gods

And find them wanting

Not reason but heart

Don't you feel in the fall

How gravity grows stronger

Even your soul gets taken down

Finally Fall Valentine

I can still quiet my mind

A green yard taught me young

How to do it how to stand

Up and holler for attention

In front of that large mob of thoughts

So it all goes calm as grass

And I can see how beauty only

Dips her toe in to what

We see here as fallen flowers

Where what we call ugly

Is not to have loved enough

By that first day of fall

So your heart just floats there

Like an empty sunny field

No one stopping by

When Light And Dark Are Equal Valentine

Wishes look regrets

Turned inside out

Even at three we want

To do it ourselves

Only our will to go on

Only an unoccupied outline

An indefensible scribble to offer

But isn't it important we begin

In a completely helpless way

That we remember the time

Before memory intruded

With its ideas of empty space

That someone holds us tightly

And we are given another chance

At some innocence and peace

They Keep Trying Valentine

In the local calendar of birds

The mockingbird resembles September

When they return without a word

About where they've been

Or what they've been up to

Not every backyard gets one

That whole first month is spent

Inspecting the boundaries of song

Testing their resolve 

To sum up the summer

To make a little book of it

Another lost gospel

Pages and pages of nights

Trying again to sing

The whole world awake

Simultaneous Valentine

Things born at the same time

Like trees and thinking

Or the moon and feeling

Or the oceans and longing

Minds that appear at the same time

After long preparation together

Bearing the marvelous and the new

Then resuming their places in the sky

Light that comes at the end of the day

Flaring and urging us to follow

Into the other side of things

All of us dreaming at the same time

Slowly unwinding the same dream

From which there's no need to awaken

Pale Green Valentine

If I subtract my thinking

And circumvent my feeling

Is the product not some moss

Getting ready to bloom

Under a quaking aspen

Or a stand of cedars

I like to think we could

Have been on a bleak shore

Before the birds and animals

Descended ready to be us

But it's all still there

Our childhoods waiting to be rescued

That green we have transformed

Into enough innocence to go on

Of Course Valentine

Conscience like a cat

Leaps into my lap

Settles in and purrs

Her little soul assembling all

My venial and immortal crimes

Until she falls asleep and dreams

Of slowly becoming a human being

With a will and an I of her own

Suddenly she wakes and glares at me

Of course you ate the apple

It was juicy and delicious

The first tart taste of freedom 

Dripping from your mouth

Leaving you hungry for more

More and more of becoming you

A Gardener's Regrets Valentine

From this safe distance

I can't tell if my hibiscus

Is dead or setting new leaves

On its gray bare branches

When the honeysuckle breached

The top of the trellis some

Went south some north

And some kept going up

The blue-flowering tree 

Intensified into a haven

For the Verdin and the red

Finches chattering away

The cruel sun mostly kept me inside

Watching it all grow wild

Have I wasted my life

Do You Valentine

I think the gingerly first step

From phosphorus to plant

Was just as mighty as the leap

From the grass to the animals 

That eat it having developed

A soul perfect for its locale

But do you recall the moment

You woke aware of yourself

As your own species never before

Seen on the earth in this

Particular configuration

That heady first taste of freedom

The phosphorus in your mouth

That set you burning to be you

Stolen Light Valentine

How did they steal the light

And bear it to our infant sight

When everything was night

Did they creep behind the curtain

When the guardian was sleeping

Did they storm the holy shrine

The gold they couldn't touch

But the silver they made off with

Shattering it to pieces until

They themselves began to shine

Father Saturn Mother Sun

Brother Moon Sister Earth

It was all a cozy plan

Until the stars invented man

US Valentine

Now that America's old

Doppelganger regularly

Appears on everyone's TV

Right up in your face

We get to see the possibilities

Of ignorance and darkness

In a more unavoidable way

A good part of our group soul

Still predatory and greedy

So many unloved children

With only a thin margin

Out there in here between

Half in love with freedom

Half in love with being chained

Rain Prayer Valentine

If the plants make up the letters

And the animals form the words

And the stark stars run on 

Like sentences what language

Is being overheard

Doesn't the rain sound a little 

Lithuanian to you as if

Mumbled by a French child

The gutturals and accent ague 

Words that are the clatter

They speak of water

You can write with

They paint the sea like love

With a gray burnish a sky

Of total relinquishment above

Archive Of The Future Valentine

I keep looking back amazed

At the history of us humans

Every day I search for a few simple facts

Only to be outnumbered by vague opinions

Did you know we almost lost

Most of Aristotle's works

Stored in a damp basement

By one of his closest friends

Imagine them crumbled to dust

But rescued at the last minute

By a greedy bookseller for cost

Every day I search for those

Everything-is-lost moments

That come and go in our history

That something marvelous and terrible

Almost didn't happen and then it did

Roadside Valentine

Having perceived the planets spinning

In the plants having received

The animals roaming in the stars

And gone out to see them from behind

Having beheld the mineral I

Buried deep in the dark earth

And still flowing in from distant space

Having met the looming figure

On the road and been thrown back

Upon myself I call on you

Who did once make me

To beget me again and again

Until we have the thing we wanted

Enough love to set us free

North Shore Bay Valentine

How far is one thought

Buried from another

A matter of feet between graves

In the Head Cemetery

Room left for the mowers

To bring some order in between

So the paths stay open

So you can find the stone

That bears the memory 

Of your name a whole

Family of thoughts risen

Long since wandered off

But still we bring them roses

Say their names and see their faces

Back Home Valentine

I dreamed a great being

Strolling the beaches of the stars

Extinguishing the darkness

Around her as she sailed

Came upon our bright blue stone

Plucking it from the sand

With a child's joy

At finding a keeper but

Under her microscope back home

She saw it was some kind of seed

The blue sheen just the outer covering

And when she teased its wings apart

She found a tiny infant's eyes

Staring right back up at hers

Which made her laugh and cry

And shook me hard awake

Walled Like Uruk Valentine

Each of us with our own

Entourage of spirits around us

Our own secret service followers

To protect us and arrest us

Each of us a monarch mind

Whose courtiers bow and scrape

Whose wise advisors tell us

What to say and think

Or it could be a circle of friends

A family of overlapping ideas

Who perceive you at your best

Even when you least expect it

These thoughts won't leave you alone

Until you can create your own

What Challenges You Valentine

The challenge for the garden gods

Having worked through all their seeds

Was to culminate in the string section

Moving among the trees

Just think what it takes

Over a passionate summer

To learn all those notes and tremors

And then to be deflowered

By some random breeze

To give your body away

With hardly a muffled cry

To have been loved into life

By the weary garden gods

And know you will never die

Surrounded Valentine

More and more the commonplace

Reveals the presence of the archetypal

The three of us having a meal together

Starving and wolfing it down

Assuming symbolic proportions

Surrounding our awareness

That we are more than ourselves

The conversation takes a serious turn

When you speak of your dying mother

How hard you are working

To keep her alive and yet

You admit without death

The world would grind to a halt

The eternal would play no part

Seen Sometimes Valentine

A flicker lives in my head

And one in my blue-breaking tree

Easy for me to get them confused

The bright fierce bird outside

With the one that flickers inside

Two lights with a branch between

Seen sometimes flashing brainward

I think these two are mates

Alive in two adjoining cages

Longing to link together

And become one winged word

With a laddered back

And a hooked beak

That could eat your heart out

Paradise Eyes Valentine

They could see all of paradise at first

And of course they fell in love

But what were they closed to

That the beautiful garden snake

Could promise her he'd open

If she just ate this apple I mean

Are there two sets of eyes

That open on different worlds

Where they floated for a while

Resting on a leaf where they moulted

Casting off their invisible skin

It has been centuries settling in

Too long under this borrowed light

For our paradise eyes not to open again

He Was Beheaded Today Valentine

Now that we can hold our brains

In the palms of our hands

And peer into our crystal balls

And can dial up God or the gods

If we have something to learn

About ancient libraries

Or just need a plumber

To talk us down to earth

Distance means nothing

When water comes from the faucet

And we wear the same smile

All my angels are practical people

I earnestly depend upon

And just a text away

Do I Know You Valentine

On the long screened porch

At twilight of an old whaling

Captain's rambling house

I found you sitting by yourself

Watching the tide sweeping the light

Far out into the starry bay

It was the first time I saw you

As a real person in your own right

With your own inner struggles

Having nothing and everything

To do with me your curious son

But now years later I want

What I didn't want then

To go and sit beside you

And ask you all my questions

And answer all of yours

And then just sit in silence

Amazed and satisfied

Those Valentine (for Paul)

Those with whom you are merely familiar

(Familiarity breeds a family)

And those who you really embrace

And work for their respect

Those who may accompany you

Even over great distances

Losing touch out of time

Those you know who trust

Something more beautiful

Than themselves the first

Friendship lies with the self

But the template for it waits outside

With those who can be counted on

But a few fingers securely touching

Those we live for those we love

Thanks To Him Valentine

I know she's doing mostly well

In heaven because she was

So gregarious here on earth

People really interested her

But I worry about my dead father

A man I found hard to love

Though I was glad my brother

And sister could make him laugh

Which left me free to wander

The slums and galleries of Toronto

When I showed him one of my poems

Ashamed to ask for his approval

He passed it back to me with a grin

Son I have no idea what this means

And that laugh we shared together

Being Seen valentine

How to prepare to see them

And not just sense them there

The bodiless ones surrounding us

Who breath a more delicate air

Is it partly because we don't want

To see what they see

With their enormous gaze

Now they know the other side

Of who we are swallowing

All the distances between

Slowly like feeding newborn chicks

Some worms among the seeds

They are bringing us all along

For the purpose of some song

Empty Valentine

Turning the empty pages

Of the book of the moon

Like being back in school

Opening those first blank pages

Of our very own notebooks

As if the teacher had given

Each of us a little soul

Newly-printed a little stiff

To write our crooked letters in

Before they became words

Impatient to be spoken

That moment the moon remembers

That whiteness ruffled by the wind

That hush of joy in the room

Summer's End Valentine

Why are some butterflies

So frantic except when

They're so still the ones

With the smaller wings

Have to beat faster to carry

Their huge auras while

The swallowtails and monarchs

Can afford to float

And yet stay fragile

For a thousand miles

In a wet patch of grass

I found a Least Skipper

Would you believe she asked

Three generations every year

Rainbow Moon Valentine

What if the moon

Wore a different 

Color every month

A procession of moods

Moving through the spectrum

Each full moon etched

With a little image

An ethereal pictograph

Then tonight we'd see returning

A woman in a thalo blue robe

Bearing the child of fall

In her arms the cooling nights

The harrowed fields of light

Full of sorrow and expectation

Researching Valentine

The will has a will of its own

How often it gets in destiny's way

And even the most vigilant heart

Has been known to skip a beat

When you walk into the room

We say the mind's made up

As if it were an imaginary thing

And not the restless traveler it seems

Sometimes my soul feels drawn

And quartered by the world

What I want and feel and do

My will on Mars my head

On Venus and oh my heart

Still in love with the earth               

That Word Valentine

What love do I mean

When I say that word

When there seem to be so many

Different enthusiasms evoked

That qualify for its use

Does it feel like it loses

Some of its power and focus

When that's just not true

It's the only word we have

That's strong enough to grow

Into being applied eventually

To everything and everyone

Even all we fear and hate

Whether it comes soon or late

Half-way Valentine

Half-way home

I followed a hopper

Through the forest of grass

Who'd lost one

Of his leaping legs

So we had to limp along

Following the fading

Foot-prints of the rain

Over and over he tried

To explain why he couldn't

Take me in a whole brood

To feed and the wife

Off on another escapade

But if I valued my life he said

I'd keep going the grass

Would take care of the rest

Honeysuckle Valentine

Dark green in shadow

Yellowy-green in the sun

So it seems half-flourishing

Half-dead until the light

Leans to the left and they

Easily trade places green shadows

Flowing back into the yellow

While the other green fades

Passing the sun back and forth

Refusing life refusing death

As if there were something in between

Something less abstract

More personable and distinct

In the construction of a flower

Quarreling Valentine

A quarreling family

Of red finches

Is eating away 

My one hibiscus

That so far has bloomed

But once only a few

Red-throated golden

Chalices last summer

As soon as they see

A new bud like a little 

Lettuce-head their beaks

Are wedged to plunder

Until each branch

Thwarted starts to die

Until I cannot call you

My hibiscus anymore

Stark raving dead

How I dragged you

To the desert

So the finches

Would be fed

Second Chance Valentine

To find the place I was child

And see the house no longer there

Our wild grassy yard eaten up

By a suspicious toad-like two-flat

But the corner's still there looking

Down the hill where we would

Stand and holler 'We want war'

To the Grafton gang and run

Like hell to our hiding places

Cowards were we all but now

I'm back to settle the score

They are nowhere to be seen

I was wrong about the war

We meant to yell 'We want more'

Old As I Am Valentine

The first thing I want to do

When this oven summer cools a bit

Is cut out those three dead branches

From our old pomegranate tree

And trim the suckers from its trunk

So we can see its true stature

Come winter when its leaves are gone

A few shriveled fruit hanging on

While it plunges deeper into the ground

Eating its way to where I imagine

The secret of flowering is found

And carried back up to the sun

Staring back in our faces

Breathless as any newborn thing

So Far Valentine

What so far my soul

Has uncovered about itself

While living in and around

This amazing human body

Is the sense of some mysterious

Third part when I say I to myself

When my soul hears that word

It cowers with embarrassment 

Trying to hide its pride

My soul is guessing

There's another I behind mine

More resourceful more refined

Or how account that sometimes

Sometimes I can be

If not beautiful then kind

Invincible Valentine

Our freedom is a leaping thing

A cricket in long grass

Chasing one another around

If it's a god who punishes us

He'll have to get in line

And what now and then

If we are never caught

As you have caught and held me

Our freedom is a limping thing

Faith the first to falter

And hope that loudmouth

Gone but leaving the door ajar

And you just standing there

Invincible as love

Following Valentine

His excerpts are very brief

But let you know how to find

Where they fit in other worlds

If you want to follow them up

With further thinking on the matter

Digging deeper slowly constructing

A map of the events that must

Have preceded this rocky earth

All we have made

Out of nothing we sparks

Falling on dry grass

A fire came to our rescue

But the grass was always there

Driving Back Valentine

You say I am your sunflower

But I say you are my

Queen Anne's Lace

Is it because we both 

Love to look up

What speech flourishes inside

Before we can say a thing

These fields of waving whiteness

With a few blue chicory thrown in

Aren't we also words

On the verge of being spoken

No one could say you

Before you did and all

My stars were listening

Breakfast Valentine for Dave

A chocolate do-nut

With candy sprinkles

The scientists assemble

The first pictures

Of a black hole

Exposed by what light

Surrounds it a cup

Of steaming coffee

To temper the sweetness

Of discovery another bite

Of the invisible darkness

The spiraling heart of the universe

A hole we peer through

In search of our own

Sasparilla Valentine

Hot day for the sasparilla

But that's not their name

These purple corollas

Blooming among the gold

Lantana umbels lovely

Word umbel umbel umbel 

An inhalation exhaled

A fragrance on the breath

Beautiful day to be

Good for nothing

But to sit and stare at them

To breath in and out

To take it all in

And give it all up

Real Light Valentine

The darkness our eyes can see

Is not the real darkness

Which only the I can see

Hidden in the light of the heart

Only the I can behold

Its own darkness

As its own creation

Out of its own suffering

But how can we endure it

Take this brilliant afternoon

The sound of a siren blazing through

Stand there comfortless alone

But feel sure the real light

Which is love can reach you here

That the darkness is only delusion

I Have A Picture Of Her Skiing Valentine

The oldest of seven

Her mother died

When she was fourteen

Of consumption leaving her

In that position her father

Almost always gone

Working on the trains

Until her Grandma came 

And freed her to flee the nest 

Insistent on her own life

The only one who did see

How much larger the world could be

Sailing for parts unknown

Until she had me

Ars Poetica Valentine, for Daniel

In my dreams last night

An important line was spoken

I repeated it several times

Trying to imprint it

On whatever memory 

I could salvage there

Drifting from scene to scene

Hoping to bring it back

With me when I woke up

But it was all of three hours later

Before I remembered that dream

Hearing and speaking those words

That might have saved my life

If I had only written them down

Inherited Valentine

I wonder if the passions of ancient Rome 

And Greece two thousand years later

Are showing up in our blazing summers

Climate is such a spiritual thing

Even the sun and rain have to bend

To the will of time to soften the blow

Even the mountains greedy for their share

Of visionary rainbows moving a few inches

Away by the moon every year

It doesn't take a change of scenery

To tell we've been pushed

Over a line in the sand at last

Where's there's no going back

Where the future must solve the past

Sometimes Valentine

Sometimes I push my thoughts upstream

Against the restless current of the past

Over the tiring rocks and rapids 

In search of the quiet pools

Where I can crawl up on the sand

And catch my breath

Sometimes I think this is the shorter way

To the source up there 

In memory's mountains

Not downward to the shore that cannot be

But back up to the beginning now

Where it passes into becoming

Bubbling up out of the earth

Melting heaven's snow

Archival Valentine

All morning long I spent

Tracking down a word

That set a steady pace through

Stacks of books and notes

Now scattered around the room

Only to find what it means

In the present tense defies

What it meant in the past

Along the way I visited the coast

Distracted as only the ocean can

By its pictures of endless drift 

Where I came upon the story

Of a glass boat far out at sea

Carrying my word to me

The Cauldron Of Ceridwen Valentine

I can't imagine why

The red finch mates and stays

Through these hot desert days

And these cold winter nights

Where I find them year-round

Settling for a life in my little yard

Migration doesn't seem to be

An option nor the climate

Any obstacle to the songs

They've planned I think

They've learned to live apart

From life and death

And come and go

To show me how

Prompter's Valentine

Shakespeare makes us believe his lives

Have played all the parts in his plays

Someone who has brought to ripeness

All his ghostly former lives

And put them shaking on the stage 

A terrible sweetness in their mouths

Refusing to side with history or

Tragedy or comedy completely

I love that he retired in the end

To resume the usual family life

Someone's husband quarreling in bed

Or bringing flowers to his son's grave

While out here in the throes of the world

His many lives sustain us still

Some Afternoons Valentine

Fierce fervent cloud-beings

Rear up above these always-summer islands

Brilliant white caryatids

Carrying large dark lakes

Looming above the beaches

So the bay begins to sparkle

With a million fallen stars

In the twilight they create

Scattering brief showers

We go out to stand and dance in

Releasing our bodies from our souls

Now we have the chance to  

Feel their hands upon us

The shaping fingers of the gods

Slapping Valentine

She slapped my face hard

Introducing a whole new element

Into the conversation

I was twelve and had

Just told her she was

Not a good mother mistreating

My friend her weeping son

I admit she listened first

While I read her the riot act

I almost quoted scripture but that

Would have presumed too much

We paused briefly eye to eye

But I never saw it coming

When I quickly slapped her back

All Over Valentine

Can anything flare in the future

That was not seeded in the past

When I look back at the field I've plowed

I see the furrows in my forehead

And what I thought weeds gone wild

The fall has turned them all to gold

It turns out time is the abyss

Out of which is cut our own

Little space to work things out in

To ruin and redeem ourselves

Like any good arable land

And then lie idle for many years

We behold them all over the world

Empty grassy fields

Pregnant with us and yearning

Pilgrim's Valentine

No things but from ideas of the things

No brain but the thinking that sustains it

No feeling that doesn't prove we're dreaming

No will that isn't his

No island that doesn't see us coming

No sea-air we haven't breathed before

So why did we feel abandoned

When the ferry dropped us on the shore

We'd heard there was still a forest

With its original birds and trees

A thousand different climates

In valleys unexplored 

A lake of burning stars

Where the gods could be implored

Enough Valentine

If my task is just

To make use of

Everything you tell me

Dear language of the stars

You'll have to speak

A little louder and

Slower and try

Not to ramble on about

Your beautiful constructions

Come closer to my ear

So your lips are touching

And I can feel your breath

Just whisper his name

That will be enough

'White And Greens In Blue' Valentine

I love you the way

Goethe loved Rubens

For his acute memories of nature

'in the minutest particulars'

I love you the way a fake painting

Cannot be told from its masterpiece

'in the minutest particulars'

I love you the way your greens

Nestle up against the blue

Like Delos clutching its ruins

You know the shore I mean

I love you the way

You wake me from my dreams

To your minutest particulars

And call it dawn

Breaking Free Valentine

When I first noticed

Taking my sweet time

That it's only physical things

That are constantly disappearing

While something else remains

That was always there before them

That was the strange day 

The world flipped over for me

I became the world

The world being me

Of course it doesn't last

That's part of the point

Just the outline fretwork

Of my next invention

Common Sense Valentine #2

When we abandon common sense

Perceptions of the world

We argue about abstractions

To get around the obvious elephant

I think it's where we're stuck

At this stage of human development

Overthinking everything to the point

Where everything is threatened

But only common sense

Can show us what is nonsense

Because it doesn't come you'll

Notice only from the head

But from the belly and the heart

Common Sense Valentine

What makes sense common

Is that it's a shared

Understanding of how

To keep things simple

Without which our piety

Turns cruel stops listening

And our inherent arrogance

Takes ownership of your needs

With a benevolent smile

Common sense says

I am not better than you

With all its implications

While the world keeps shouting

Yes I am

Tonight's Valentine

When I get home tonight

Would you please remind me

To trim my eyebrows they're

Starting to look like mustaches

From the nineteenth century

How much hair should be on a face

Depends on how much you want to hide

But these two parentheses

Above my eyes have formed

A bridge of thorny brambles

Endangering my vision of you

When I get home tonight

Would you please remind me

To hold you tight