Sunday, September 29, 2024

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

Friday, September 27, 2024

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

Thursday, September 26, 2024

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

Wednesday, September 25, 2024

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

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

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

Monday, September 23, 2024

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

Friday, September 20, 2024

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

Thursday, September 19, 2024

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

Wednesday, September 18, 2024

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

Tuesday, September 17, 2024

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

Monday, September 16, 2024

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

Saturday, September 14, 2024

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

Friday, September 13, 2024

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

Thursday, September 12, 2024

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

Wednesday, September 11, 2024

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

Tuesday, September 10, 2024

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

Monday, September 9, 2024

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

Friday, September 6, 2024

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

Thursday, September 5, 2024

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

Wednesday, September 4, 2024

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

Tuesday, September 3, 2024

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

Sunday, September 1, 2024

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