Sunny Valentine

Looking through a lizard's eyes

Come out to dart along the wall

Myself a lizard I recognize

What was it I was looking for

 

A supper in the honeysuckle

A rendezvous in the bougainvilla

Hiding from the sudden sparrow

Thinking my lizard thoughts

 

Climbing upward to the warmth

Of this at last abundant sun

Till I can feel it in my blood

That even I am loved 

Iris Valentine

Purple yellow bright and pale

What became of the hundred iris

I planted against the house

I forgot to tell them

Every three or four years

You have to be dug up

The failing ones discarded

The becoming ones replanted

Who will take a year to bear

The most vibrant colors

Or you can just abandon them

Let them grow their own way

Pressing out into the grassy yard

Come on years later in the ruins 

Till All My Words Have Kissed Valentine

Gneiss is bliss

Come to rest

In something warm

And solid as a breast

You can lean into it

Like some part of you

You recovered missed

Bones answering to bones

Holding the world together

So contentment not get

Too hazy too relaxed

It forgets how to wrest

The hard thoughts from

The heart of the stone 

The Beautiful Water Valentine

Always feeling a little marooned

In our inner lives it's good

We have that island to return to

Safe from being rescued and

Dissolving back into it all

But it's all too much pretending 

We know what we're doing

When we can barely keep

Our heads above the beautiful water

After yet another shipwreck

This time crawling up on the rocks

Somehow I've managed to remember

How to build a signal-fire 

For the ships that pass me by

Or Maybe Valentine

Have you not noticed how time

Keeps claiming more and more space

One has the sense of some discovery 

Of some country overrun

Then time in retrograde motion

The sailing past of the past

Does all this not come to a cliff

At the lands-end of the universe

Or maybe it just circles back

Time bends and teeters on the brink

As it enters space stopping for a moment

In the yard where it leaves the air

Its shadow carrying that scent

You thought was lilacs

 

Whatever Happens Valentine

The means by which light is made

Implies the primacy of beings 

Who are so conscious and creative

They can manifest as galaxies

In the most artistic ways 

Light that never stops working

In the endless fields of darkness

Toward which it seems to be speeding

Confident it cannot will not

Be extinguished in the depths 

Certain even if all the lights go out

It will only take a moment

Before they all come on again

The gentlest among them

Has given its assurance and consent

Our Skin Is Our Largest Organ Valentine

Just a little prick

Then he shoves the needle in

And takes what looks

Like a staple-remover

Extracting the black dot

From the knee of my skin

And says we'll send it in

To be examined closely

By some experienced eye

That knows exactly what it is

It will take a week or so

I ask but he cannot tell me

Where it comes from

Or what it really wants

And all this with a grin

Twilight Valentine

Around the mineral body

Within the plant-like soul

Above the human animal

Works the spirit of it all

 

But only thoughts can feel it

When spirit speaks to spirit

Urgently yet tenderly

Like a mother's call

 

When at twilight all alone

She goes searching for her children

Come home come home to me

How I miss you all

Geometrical Valentine

I draw a line up

From the center of the earth

To the surrounding sky

Where it disappears

Among the flooding stars

I let it be the axis of my soul

The path the moon took

Birthing this ethereal world

I let it be the big hand

Of what time is for

The possibilities of turning

From nothing into something

And then again to nothing 

The spirit building at its core

Unstoppable Valentine

A lovely pushy soprano

Before she could be stopped

Sang Schubert for us

Her whole body an instrument

For some unleashing force

Not entirely natural

But entirely possessed her

So overcome that flesh and blood

Could hold a note so strong so long

But that diva would not be stopped

She threw the patient scientists

Off the stage she put the stunned

Philosophers in their place 

She had to be carried out

By ten burly men in the end

And sent trilling down the street

Idyl of the Afterlife Valentine

In the end we're given a garden

And told to start again

Coming at it from the other side

Of the lit air and rain 

Blue and yellow bearing green

The true color of the soul

Settling over the earth 

The falling dew of stars

Where we're told to wash our feet 

And given hoes and rakes

And the few handfuls of seeds

We've saved from perishing

And told to get to work

The fields await your ravishing

The Fairy Tale of Petrichor and Geosmin Valentine

Once or twice upon a time

You come across star-crossed lovers

Which is still a thing in the world

It could be a constellation

Of unforeseeable events

Culminating in a cruel collision

Their bodies buried in a deep

Grave while their love

Roams the blue sky

But it all comes back to the body

That scent of the earth

Rising up in the rain

That says love is being made

And everything is forgiven

Whirled Valentine

The wind takes the world

And shakes it like a child

Her crying doll now look

What you've made me do

Must I clean up everything myself

I'm tired of playing house with you

Let's mix it up a bit

Let's dance and whirl till all

The stuffing flies out of us

Let's get carried away

Pretend to be the wind

Roaming the restless world

A ghost howling at the windows

O heart let it in

Just When Valentine

Just when the pomegranate flowers fade

Blue panicles of the chaste tree 

Pick up the theme like piccolos

From slowly lifting strings

Which is when the bees sweep in 

A throbbing chorus covering the tree

Audible above the traffic's drone

When the wind swings its baton

And the stiff branches are drawn

Across the metal roof and shriek

Like a child practicing her cello 

But the theme hurries on

Unstoppable sublime

Until it all turns yellow

And the stars go blind

Who Is It Valentine

Who is it flapping their wings

Come fly with me a while

Who is it long hammering

Look I've built you a castle

Who is it weeping in the garden

I am your truest friend

Of course imaginary

If only thinking makes it real

As when you suddenly see

Out of the blurred gray objects 

In a picture the clear face

Of a calf you can't unsee

Out of nothing the whole

Becomes a part a hole

Leading to a greater part

Something wakens all at once

In your sleeping heart

 

What Will You Become Valentine

If birds evolved from dinosaurs

What will birds evolve to be

Over the coming centuries

What can we find if we unpack

The mystery of their ancestry

That might provide a clue

To their future transformations

The divine tinkering involved

The most precise adjustments

Of matter by imaginations

Working in darkness and light 

Sometimes the moon returns us

To that unearthly night

When the first birds sang

When the last dinosaur was dead

Except Valentine

In the six years dear one

Since your new birthday

Alive again in spirit land

Can you tell me so far

What you've learned

What as a child there

You've had to undergo

Slowly separating yourself out 

From everything around you

Down to your essential self

An idea among ideas

Wandering in vast expanses

Searching prior lives you see

It's all a mystery to me

Except when I feel you near

Out There Valentine

On the other side of the zodiac

I turned and looked back

Everything outside me flipped

So it was all inside me now

It's true I was the cosmos

While sitting on my porch

Just as Ptolemy suggested

From out there we're all stars

And the earth the youngest 

So it knows the least of who

It must grow up to be

I could see that when I

Stood back from the painting

In the mirror at the back of the room

The little hazy face of memory

Planting Season Valentine

Are there not songs in the seeds

I pour into the bird-feeder

Old songs and new songs

Waiting to be sung

The ring-necked doves are mating

On the roof above the sea

Of humming traffic while

The finches sing along

The nutriment of song

The welling up of it

From the body of the earth

To be consumed by little beaks

Who carry on the ancient sounds

I try to keep the feeder full

The lazy farmer of such songs

Two Words Valentine

At the bar when the liquor

Of philosophy was on him 

And partly because he wanted to stifle

The man beside him who wouldn't

Stop talking he turned to him

And asked what two words were the most

Important in life and to shut up

Until he could come up with them

No one moved but the jukebox

Kept playing some pitiful song

And no one took a drink

So he turned to the old man

On his left and asked the same

And calmly he said 'just think'

Entered Valentine

I don't believe that hummingbird

Was acting on its own 

An abruptness that was planned

With the precision of a star

When it entered our door

Hovering above our heads

Its rainbow flame

I felt it was asking

For some closer connection

Some clearer understanding

Of flight and stasis

Who themselves are still gods

Wonder was all that sustained us

We could hear its thrumming heart

She Says Valentine

As adjective to noun

The moon to sun

Or comma hurrying on

To that glowing dot

Which happens to be

Venus holding her breath

Gathering her thoughts

Love brings an end she says

To everything not love 

However long it takes

Not heaven or earth escape

My warm embrace 

I am all you love

And keep it safe