Monday, March 31, 2025

Taken Valentine

It takes a soaring eagle
To grasp a hare's life
It takes the scent
Of lilacs to be swallowed
It takes a winter to reduce 
Whole libraries to a few
Empty endless pages
Daring to be written on
But why did it take so long
Centuries I waited for me
To rest my head on your arm
If death is short and love
Is long then let it take 
All the spring it needs 
For us to wake

Sunday, March 30, 2025

They Know Valentine

A  cargo of middle-aged mothers
And a sleepy old man in the front seat
Traveling with the destinies
Of their children in their hearts
From a meeting of schools and teachers
Reminiscing when they were girls
Running to catch the phone
Gabbing with girlfriends for hours 
Laughing about the tricks they played
Each with a saga to tell
In the struggle to grow up
And the comfort of being friends 
They know how much the world depends
On childhood and a child
The wonder in their faces
Their warm embraces and first words

Friday, March 28, 2025

Maybe Valentine

Condensing down as we all have been
From star to star over millennia
Will these bodies not become stones 
To one another in the end
Mountains to be clambered over
Will we block our way
Moving forward as a whole
Or they say not at all
But we are all still children
Holding on to our mother's hand
Who doesn't see the car coming 
Or maybe the light of the stars
We once were is just arriving
So we can quickly get across
Hurried by angels as in the pictures

Thursday, March 27, 2025

People of the Heart Valentine (for Lee)

To me it all says
Be! Be!
But who made being
Forms transform 
Only the road stays road
And the task of finding
A few companions to walk with
Even if only for short distances
And a fleeting conversation
Thank God time is a fiction
His emissaries impose on us
From which we can now and then
Escape into that eternal moment
That still comes and goes
In us and between us

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Afterwards Valentine

It was still spring
When he returned 
Exuberant spring
Overwhelming him
For days he sat in wonderment
Getting as far as a stump
In the yard to watch
A raft of stars descend
As if to carry him away
Until he had achieved
A stillness next to death
Just to feel again and again
Its overcoming the passing through
Apparent in every leaf and stem

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

The Seventh Day Valentine

There's something so child-like
About this curious old man
Still willing to follow birds
To find his own way
Sneaking around the castle's
Dark halls and locked doors
Into all the forbidden places
This holder of secrets now 
Who must be imprisoned
At the gates of heaven 
How he loved the music
The dancing and the sailing
This tired little boy
Who just wants to go home

Monday, March 24, 2025

The Sixth Day Valentine

An egg becomes a bird
Bursting forth cooked and burnt
Whose ashes deposit two
Tiny figures that fed on blood
Start to grow into king and queen
It all goes back to memory
The first magic show
A house of mirrors where
The sun burns out the sun 
The sadness of metaphors
That we can only approximate 
What's really going on in us
We sleep on mysteries 
Until the calling of the dawn

Sunday, March 23, 2025

The Fifth Day Valentine

The first formulations of the idea
Of a physical-magical cosmos
Love took for its thesis
It would share its existence
Out to the smallest things
In a continuing evanescence
It would walk the world 
Storing its misgivings
In beautiful all bodies
And fall asleep in the earth
Dying into its creations
Over and over again
Giving birth to a child
While remaining a virgin

Saturday, March 22, 2025

The Fourth Day Valentine

Here we enter another world
Half-sensual half-sublime
Christ pulls back his veil
Revealing still more lives
Seven little ships carrying coffins 
Sail out on a dark lake
A transformation underway
After which one hopes
Nothing will be the same
Some power still lingers
Don't you feel it in the pictures
He has painted and left behind
Real water in this fountain
Poured from a living mind

Friday, March 21, 2025

The Third Day Valentine

 Before there can be a wedding
There must be a weighing of our love 
How much of it is self-desire
And how much the real fire
How much a feather can tip the scales 
To prove the phony and the liar
The stupid who play the gods for fools
And find yourself among them
Before there can be a wedding
There must be romance the unraveling 
Of unsolvable riddles
In someone else's face 
A cup must be passed
The taste of tears and laughter

Thursday, March 20, 2025

The Second Day Valentine

Happy the day that brings the sun
And moon together in the same sky
Dangling from a distant star
And happy the man loudly singing 
Through the woods of another spring
Keeping to the path sometimes disappearing
Pursuing a raven and a dove
Questioned does he qualify
At several stops along the way
And only at the last second
Swept through the slamming door
Of the castle of his dreams
Only to be shackled as before
Content to be left to sleep
Below in a drafty hall
Having found a friend

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

The First Day Valentine

He doesn't say how many in the end
Were drawn up from that dark pit
But he was the first
To thank his rescuers 
Bloodied head and feet
Having survived the nightmare
He remembers the angel
Almost shattering him this morning
The invitation stirring in his pocket 
An old man stumbling on his way
Knowing exactly where he's going
With no idea how to get there
And we left in this dark pit
Remember him and trust 
He will remember us

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Wind's Valentine

The wind is up today
Air impelled by angels
Giving themselves away
Showing us how it's done
Warmly and yet with little
Flecks of ice that sting the face 
Hurrying us on in the sun
So it almost seems to carry us
A step or two and lift
Our feet up off the ground
Fearlessly and joyfully
Prodding us along
Wind that is the will
Weaving us our fate
Neither too early 
Nor it seems too late

Monday, March 17, 2025

Getting Through Valentine

 Coming to the great wall
At the limits of my knowing
I walked and walked and walked
Until I found a little crack
And took to hammering every day
A hole I could crawl through
That finally brought me to
The endless fields of feeling
The phantom of the visible world
Once passed there's no return
Leading to another massive wall
I knew to be my impenetrable will
With its tall turrets and flapping flags
And me banging on its only door

Saturday, March 15, 2025

Coming Valentine

A straight line divides my yard
Half in shadow half in sun
But the light is slowly pushing back
The darkness against the wall
So I can see each blade of grass
And all kinds of budding weeds 
Step over that threshold into the light
Until the whole space is taken in
Almost every shadow erased
And for a few moments
I too can stand in the sun
Illuminated and overcome
As if some flowering could come
Some leaves sprout along my limbs

Friday, March 14, 2025

Gone Valentine

She lost her wig in the wind
It lifted right off her head
Like a possessed black bird
Half-flying half-stumbling
Through the paying gate
Out onto the busy freeway
Dodging cars and flying feet 
Only to get by a wall arrested
And taken to the pound
To sit in a dusty cage 
And dream of that lonely head
Where she had made a home
Now all its thoughts have flown

Thursday, March 13, 2025

Over There Valentine

The lines get broken
As if the wind intervened
Tearing them from the mouth
So the sounds get spoken
In a certain rhythmic way
Sieved through the body
At best as a shiver
Of something already known
Some joy returning from the future
Out of a long line of traffic
You find a place to pull over
Sheltered from the wind
So you can actually hear
Some bird's song in the words
Against that howling over there

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Late Valentine

Always trying to catch up
I leave myself behind
Is he following or leading
Such a little blur
Just ahead in the crowd
Or cloud-like stalking me
But we've promised to meet up
If I remember how to get there
At that long-gone Chinese place 
We hurried to after work
Where you were always waiting
And I was always late
I'm sure I'll get there this time
I have marked the date

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Just When Valentine

When nothing comes back from him
And your goodness goes unnoticed
And even your favors are rejected
And the light of his love grows dim
In the impending darkness
Of your fear of losing him
And even the simple events of the day
Start to tear you limb from limb
And you cannot eat or sleep or pray
Just when you're certain it was all a lie
Something you conjured on a whim
He knocks on your door and asks 
Where heart have you been hiding
How long will you keep me waiting

Greatest Valentine

As in that fading reproduction
Where the Christ sits in the middle
Not at the head of the table
Flanked on either side
By two interesting evils
Calmly as you can
When something horrible
Is about to happen
Where monks took their meals 
And now tourists travel
To see it flake away
As in that face at the center
Where such forgiveness lingers
There must have been the greatest sin
 

Monday, March 10, 2025

Spring Valentine

The earth falls out of the water
The water falls out of the air
The air falls out of the warmth 
The warmth falls out of the sky
The sky falls out of the darkness
Churning at the center
All this so the leftover moon
Chalice-like can be filled
With the salvaged light of the sun
Its glow reduced for human eyes
To look at fully in the face
As much of ourselves we can manage
Filling and being poured out
On this earth which is softly rising

Sunday, March 9, 2025

Returning Valentine

When you return to your ancestral land
Jet-lagged and slightly disembodied
Whether just to visit or to stay
Whether having made it or not
In some other country far away
You find that nothing's changed
Or else nothing is the same 
Your cousins and your aunts
Take you in and feed you
Or no one of your name is left
In the dusty village of your birth
You visit the cave of a thousand buddhas
Or climb the old hill above the sea
Taking pictures of the earth
As it was and is and will be

Friday, March 7, 2025

Rain At Last Valentine

After the rain and the naked tree
And everything green left glittering
A puddle formed at my feet I swear
Of a phoenix bird in flight
Half of it sinking half of it lifting
A rainbow bubble for an eye 
Protruding and then burst
Half in victory half in defeat
And suddenly a glance of sun 
Ran like flames across its face
And took it up in a single stroke
Or was it the ground that drew it down
Leaving a little gleam of peace

Thursday, March 6, 2025

This Morning's Valentine

I watched a bright tiny cloud
Grow into a curling embryo
Where nothing was before
It doubled in size and spread 
The gray shadow of a heart
Forming at its central part 
Then the whole birthing thing
Melted back into its womb of blue
Until another brightening came
Different but it did the same
Building a body then disappearing
Out of the south a slow parade
Another and another rose to fade
Like children searching for a home

Wednesday, March 5, 2025

For Now Valentine

There is a trellis upright in my yard
And its grid of shadow on the ground 
And a tiny vine deciding
Whether and how to climb it
Or just crawl around the grass
But for now it's early spring
So its two leaves have some time
To linger in the cloudy sunlight
And watch its shadow grow and die
The mystery is how it landed
Right at that incisive point
Where two ladders meet 
Where flight seems possible
Some day some night

Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Just Starting Valentine

Dear beetles ants and worms
Of the world just starting
To wake up in the dark earth 
Only to find the stems and birds
Waiting for them still they come 
The shrunken animals of the grass
Who knew the zodiac could fall
So far or the cosmos cling
To a single mustard flower 
And what else rises up
Out of the dying earth
To claim for itself
This ever-returning sun
If not you our only one

Monday, March 3, 2025

Making His Descent Valentine

They say he will come in the clouds
Or might have already arrived
So every morning I wait to see
Where his feet are touching down
Like the impression fish leave
In water there then gone
Or one of his legs of light
Plunges through a boggy cloud
And he might waver there 
For a few visible moments
I think he's waiting also
For the last possible sunrise
Though the suspense is killing me
I'm still counting on every cloud

Sunday, March 2, 2025

Praise Valentine

Praise me Lord as I do you
Who knows what we can do
When we embrace and joke
About your great plans for us
You with your gardens and cities
Where we can stroll together
And I can finally hear
What were you thinking
When the idea of me in all this
Slid into your head and heart
I mean you must have had
Better things to do and yet
You turned you looked at me
I loved you from the start

Saturday, March 1, 2025

If One Valentine

If one blooming fruit tree
Can disclose an angel's brain 
Then 15-20 springing in your yard
Must bring an archangel down
Someone who can orchestrate
How the light is bent 
Along the infant branches 
How the flesh is formed
Out of that heavenly fragrance 
Just enough so you don't
Float away but leaves you
Dreaming in the grass
For some hours stranded
Between life and death