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