Fleeting Valentine

A little stain of darkness

Streaks across the grass
The shadow of a hummingbird

Following fast

Somewhere above

Too bright to see

The bird itself

Must catch the sun

To cast this other

On the ground

They must hover there

Alone apart or seek

Some reconciliation

In some open flower

Where Valentine

The woman in the next room

Is screaming and screaming 

Non-stop for hours and hours

How is this humanly possible

Terror screams rage screams

Some so high-pitched they

Pass over into silence

For a few blessed seconds

Flooding back even louder

More heartrending

More earth-shattering

Screams for help that never comes

Screams refusing it when it does

Where is the medicine for her grief

My sorrow that it isn't me

The doctor that can heal us both

The More Valentine

The more the light increases

The more the darkness deepens 

It rocks us back and forth

Until what's held so tightly

In the earth loosens into leaves

Some argument between them

Gets settled slowly into flowers

About to break their branches

Something given is received

But it hardly lasts a week

This eternal spring

Unconquerable spring

Re-imaging everything

In the passing of an hour

Proven Valentine

I love the way dead friends

Come back for a visit in dreams

Picking up where we left off

As if death never happened

Or at least didn't change between us 

Anything that mattered

And yet we're not the same

Some of us have put on weight

Some of us grown thin as light 

Last night lovely Judy long gone

Out of the blue appeared 

Scrolling back through her life

She came to me to prove

Love is no memory

It goes on living still

And kissed me on the cheek

Windy Valentine

Here in the desert instead of snow

A cooling calm descends

More like sleep than death

The tall saguaros climbing Calvaries

Stop to catch their breath

Until the Feast of Gabriel blows

The winds out of the west

And rain like mercy flows

Into the veins of stones

And out of a darkened sky

A few days of glory bloom 

But only if in your heart

Now broken battered bruised

You have left it room 

To give you back the sun