Following Yonder Star Valentine

The old hands of the man

Sitting next to me on the plane

The thick fingers and taut frame

Of a farmer used to pulling

Udders and steering tractors

Hither and yon now playing

Puzzles intently on his I-phone

And on my right the baby face

Of a college student majoring in

The photography side of economics

He proudly says and stares at me

Cheerfully on his way to Jackson

Hole Wyoming also on his phone

Scrolling and scrolling skiing up and down

And me in the middle reading myths

And medieval tales and ruins

We three fearless flyers

Bound for the unknown

Mary's Valentine

I come back to the blank 

Page to be humbled again

By its plain open face

My only words

To plant like kisses

To smooth my hand

Across its worried creases

Trying to convince it

You are not nothing not alone

At least no more nothing

Than I am words except

The one you bring

I love you and 

A child is born

St. Stephen's Day Valentine

Nothing recent has happened

To me lately my thoughts

Run on in speculative torrents

Or settle into sunny puddles

I am as dazed as December trees

What bird is that keeps his tail in the air

Ornithology passed me by

If I had known how to draw

Or play an instrument

Or fix a car but all I could do

Was think of you and sing

So now I see you life

Transfixed in matter

Ourselves in everything

Self-Portrait Valentine

A friend sends me three

Ink drawings he found he made

When he was a boy with cancer

Living in Kiev many years ago

In one with a few thin strokes

He's placed a body on a cross

The Christ looking down

From the upper right of the page

And in the left lower corner

An angular devil half-kneeling

Sporting a halo and a grin

Looking up no less amazed

They both look like him

Stopping By Stars Valentine

If I wait for it

I can feel the sun

Stop at the edge

Of the cold abyss

Its rays peering

Down into the dark

Of that deep well

Illuminating its pathways

Leading nowhere

Its light thrown back

Upon itself refused

What must it take for it

To love the earth so much

It turns and comes back to us

Anymore Valentine

What can we make of it

Still putting that baby

Out in the cold night

The light of the sun

Grown tattered and old

At the end of its tether

What can we hear of it anymore

The ghostly music of those stars

The mouths of a thousand

Buddhas singing as it must

Have been the tinkling

Of distant camel bells

That hungry infant gurgling

At his mother's breast

And The Gray Squirrel Too Valentine

Today's miracle revealed

A healed Achilles heel

As if it never happened

Of a young man in California

Which qualified another

Young man in heaven 

To become a saint

And have his own feast day

And shrine and prayers

All well and good

But why overlook

The other hundred miracles

I witnessed just walking

Past the playground to the park

Each one canonizing

Yet another saint

Winter Knowledge Valentine

In the desert in December

We trade a heaven for our hell

Cold nights blossom into blue

Warm sunny days with dinner

On the patio and rambling walks

Into the open spaces of the mind

A pause settles over the plants

Too cold to grow too warm to die

Whatever will arrive tomorrow

It won't be snow or even rain

Our palm trees flickering are dressed

With a kind of expectant glory

Forgotten carols of the light

And we know that we are blessed

Over The Holy Nights Valentine

At the end of his thirty-first year

In 1943 when I was three months old 

Woody Guthrie wrote thirty-three 

New Years 'Rulin's' (thus)  

In a letter to his pregnant love

(But how do three months divide

Into eighty years with so much

Left over I ask you 'Railroad Pete')

Woody's conscience had a memory 

In it that went all the way back

To the first villages and fields

Of common sense and the gentleness

That is always part of beauty

'#8 Write a song a day'

Even if no one's listening

 

Nesting Valentine

When half its leaves had fallen

And the other half remained

Gold below and green above

Hung like a heart a ragged nest

Was finally exposed suspended

At the end of a swaying branch

Low enough to look inside

Where rests a single feather

Where such hunger and eagerness

Had seen such precision and care

Too large for a finch too small

For a dove but just right

For my empty mind to enter

And ripen into flight

Returning Valentine

The more mornings I come to

After a whole mountain of mornings

Laid by hand stone by stone

Each layer fading as it's placed

So snug against the next one

Not even the sun slides through

Yet each morning seems a little lighter

And more and more of the landscape

Illumined or darkened below

Clouds with memories seen from above

When I stop to look back and down 

But something hurries me on

To that morning at the peak

That first morning I seek

Invisible Valentine

The great myth of these days

Is that the good gods have gone

Into some cloud-cuckoo land

Divinities reduced to metaphors

Or we get as far as angels

Before we start to lose our nerve

Sensing how much vaster

The invisible will take us

Beyond this apprehensible world

Shrinking back to being small

As atoms whirling in a jar

But even if it does exist my star

Attentive to my every need

I turn my back on them at times

And on my freedom I insist

December Valentine

If I wait for just the right day

I don't have to sweep the leaves at all

A northbound wind piles them up

Conveniently against the wall

Where I can gather them in bags

And haul them to the alley waste

I just have to wait and watch

For the last yellow leaf to fall

And fill the yard with a peace

Only December can know

And then just wait some more

For the cold wind to blow

The breath that breathes us all

And the birth that brings release

Hard Valentine

If as above is so below

Then we are but the mirrors

Of the gods' great endeavors

Their tragedies and victories ours

Or if we are to them the real

Objective world they're

Faithfully working on

Locked in battles

Of colors and sounds 

So it's hard to have

A quiet conversation

With one of them or just

Sit on a bench and watch

The world pass by

The Origin Of Oranges Valentine (for Dan)

In the world before oranges appeared

Ripening in our cool desert days

Showing up in our northern stores

There must have been a young king

Who called his best chefs together

Bored with apples and figs

Bring me the epitome of sweetness

In the color of courage I can taste

Extracted from our best mineral minds

Put all the trees to work till one

Can re-enclose the sun

In miniature and portable

And see to it somehow

Every child gets one

Some Times Valentine

In my dream we meet again

How are you are you well

Well as I have every been

You were crouching down

Touching the ground

I'm growing tulips now you said

I'm not really dead

I plan on visiting Brazil

And I remembered it

Was on your bucket-list

Later that day was I

Still dreaming a hawk

Swept into the yard

Landing on the trellis

Calmly side-eyeing me

Gone as quickly as it came

Here in the city of dreams

Where we live now sometimes

I call your name

And hear you calling mine

On High Valentine

Angels speaking Spanish

On my roof Jose Jesus

And Randy three kings

Come early on St. Nicholas Day

Lifetime Roofing Systems 

Lowering a new dome

On the temple I call home

Or so I imagine it

New walls new floors

From out my crumbling ruins

Muy bien muy bien

No lo sé no lo sé

I'm blessed by a whistling bird

Angel words I do not comprehend

Advent Calendar Valentine

No good coming into this world

If you don't intend to love it

At the first door nothing

But an endless blue sky

At the second and third the same

And at the fourth a starry night 

The first animals descending

Exiles and guests of the earth

Profligate and then removed

While we keep foraging on

I tremble to open the next

Radiant light pouring through the hinges

How long can my birth wait

For you to visit

Back Valentine

I see the last bee of summer

Hungrily nudging the last fall flower
And wonder if she will make it home

Before the door is locked for winter

And the leaves' last thoughts

Scurrying into piles to be burnt

In the colors of their fires

Leaving the trees to shiver

Every nerve exposed

All so generously given

All that green repossessed

Even the grass goes back to heaven

In a blaze of crystal flowers

Ice and fire fill my soul

First Valentine

When thinking penetrates dreaming

We have the best of both worlds

The pictures and their meaning

Unraveling out of a fairy-tale

When we lived in the pictures

And the words were only sounds

Remembered and perfectly repeated

Before we knew what they meant

Once upon a time our first

Thoughts caught up with us

All our personalities appeared

In a row of trees or a lake

Just recently come across

Alive in another world

Aegean Valentine

Parmenides of Elea was the first

Translator of what is and is not

An old man when the young Socrates

Sat enthralled at his feet

Listening to his poem 'On Nature'

From which we have only left

A few tantalizing fragments

But if you know only one

Of his verses or have never

Heard of him or want to

Let this be remembered

He was also the first to see love

Was the oldest of the gods

And all the rest her offspring