Two Man Valentine

Van Eyck's stalwart Adam

Has the face of a man

You'd like to get to know

Nothing has happened 

To it yet except beauty

And he has no idea

What to with it or what

It has to do with him 

But with Raphael he's

Almost unapproachable

The eyes of the first innocence

Ready to give itself away

How else can love be known 

My Sins Valentine

I have gotten my sins down 

To a manageable level

I like to think

Except for the ones

I've forgotten

Who come back to me

When I stay open

To receive them

We exchange 

Hurt feelings 

And promise to do better 

Even the unforgivable ones 

Still hold some hope

Of a better way 

My Valentine

I went to our meeting-place

But my love was not there

I sang and danced anyway

I walked home in the rain

And was seventeen again

Strange how one body

Never feels enough 

Half a love is no love

If you are old you find out

What love starts out to be

The only thing that's free

Freely given freely taken 

Who would rob love of its kiss

Given and given back

Will never be my valentine 

Behind It Valentine

Among the ones who know

What's really going on

Because they are behind it

At the highest levels of secrecy 

There is a library in a cloud

Where the names of all the innocent

And the guilty are slowly

Being unredacted as they pass 

From earth to heaven while there

In the harbors of the moon

In the courts of mercy

Others are given back their souls

And sent off to try again

To find their secret selves

In this transparent world 

To My Father Better Late Valentine

Between who he was

And who I was

Nothing in common

To talk about

The fact is we didn't

Like one another much

But refused to show it

As if it could be hidden

But still you were the one

Who carried me

Into this world

Put me here

To love you

Despite myself 

Led Down Valentine

Heaven is miniature on earth

Except everything's reversed

Seraphic mountains holding it up

The dusty feet of angels

Filtering down and at their core

They burn and burn alike

And we are all led down

To the brink of that cauldron

To swim in the fires of love

Only increasing what it consumes

Heaven assumes a human scale

Vast continents and oceans take on

A habitable form where love 

Is always losing until it wins

Somebody's Valentine

When you come to a formal garden

You know somebody's been there

Trying to straighten things out 

When you come to a formula

Or theorem you know somebody's

Been trying to write it all down

The parts that fit together

Or must be put together

We feel if we just understand 

Lifting a corner of the page

Of all that can be known

Then maybe peace would come

The peace we are promised

Beyond understanding here and now 

Brief Encounter Valentine

Right up in my face

A hummingbird rose I froze

And hurriedly tried to explain

I am no flower yet

Then what are you doing here

It wanted to know 

Carefully drilling the air

A little breeze on my cheeks

Well I was hoping you would tell me

How you manage the light

My little I come back trust me

I'm working on some nectar 

A few drops of sweetness

I have saved now gone 

Fearless Valentine

Yesterday I was lucky enough

To meet a brilliant mathematician

Who also happened to be

A beautiful human being 

A wife and mother a professor

I can report she took

A fearless attitude toward

The authority of numbers

When they tried to carry her

Too far from the practical

Consequences of their actions

She could sense the scale

Of the world living behind them

For which they are mere shadows

Of great beings left behind

We might follow to the sum 

Save Your Tickets Valentine

This morning I counted on my fingers

Fifteen different cover songs

From that single thieving bird

It was his first concert

Of the season after a long hiatus

The heartbreak you know

Of losing his mate

He returns to the stage 

Triumphant and chastened

Unapologetic and serene

They may not be my songs I sing

The ones I've saved for you

That break and mend your heart

It's just I sing them better than anyone

When I come back each year 

Over Valentine

Four amaryllis in a pot

I've saved from year to year

Timed to bloom at Easter

And they sometimes make it 

Opening in sequence

From red to pink to white

If sun and moon agree

Let's agree flowers appear

Out of a neighboring world

They really aren't from here

And yet they insist and insist

On coming back every year

Proof of paradise I guess 

The joy of blooming 

Over and over again

Must Be Valentine

What if the boy I was

Just happened to bump into

The man I've become

Him fifteen me eighty

It was a long walk to school

And often he didn't make it

So it could have happened

In some art gallery or riding

A streetcar to the end of the line 

Swallowed up in some book

Missing his stop again 

Me asking what are you reading 

Him glancing up from the pages 

What must be our life my friend 

Still Valentine

We can feel the will of the world

In the rivers and the creeks

And the great oceans

Pondering our fates

Aren't we all Magellans at heart 

Crafty our rigging creaking

As we inch toward some horizon 

What if everyone in the world

Became a sailor again

Islanders in the sea

Of the will of the world 

And still hovering out there

The real world

Waiting to be found 

February Flowers Valentine

Is the light every morning

Not a kind of speech

A language that keeps evolving

In the mouths of gods

Arguing with one another

About the way forward

Where to place the darkness 

For maximum effect 

Assembling themselves every

Morning for the great procession 

Into and up over their little

Seedling earth even to here

My waiting yard of weeds

And just down the street

A blazing bed of poppies

Like an eternal flame

Saying your name 

Figuring It Out Valentine

I think that time is

Our only real problem

How to penetrate the puzzle of how

To let it use us wisely

There's just so much of it

To account for

So much medicine

And mathematics

To be applied and adjusted 

While everything

Dances around

The way it does

And how when love

Comes into the picture

Time matters less and less

And more and more

In the same moment

And we are left together

To figure it out alone 

Snow Moon Eve Valentine

I feel how you can also feel

How strong fragility can be

Carrying the beautiful bowl

Of your life through

The crowded streets 

A grown child

How it all depends on

The most delicate operations 

Bodies flowing through bodies

With the dexterity of stars

Each I in its orbit

I know how you also know

The loneliness of our companionship

Calling out to one another

Planning where to meet sometime 

And have a glass of wine 

And gaze out on the ocean 

More Valentine

The more I sit here

It seems the less I know

Pictures come and go

But nothing sticks 

My brain is the banging door

Of an abandoned farmhouse

Somewhere in the hills

Of Uruk or Slovenia 

The more I sit here

It seems the more I get

Taken out of myself

Piece by piece slowly

So close I come to letting

The world completely replace me

And I can finally stand

And let the sun embrace me

As only the sun can 

This Day Valentine

Between two round clouds

A large X in the sky

As if it would delete the day

Draw a line right through it

Before it even gets started

But by noon the sun

Leaves not a doubt

In the blue flying by 

That this day has come

To be what a day can be

When it pulls itself together 

Sweeping through mountains

Death-defying deserts

Coming to rest in your hands 

For Your Birthday Valentine

Old age is given

To remember our sins

The done and not done

To go down to where

The mothers prepare

To gather us in 

But not yet not yet

Old age grows greedier

For life than it has ever been

Let me have 

I pray each night

Just one more morning

As a body on the earth

Holding your body near 

Invited Valentine

At the gate

Two guards wait

But you have brought

Your invitation

Which they inspect

And mutter over

You can hear the music

Coming from the mansion

Behind the hill 

While you wait

To be weighed 

And found wanting

Sent back to sleep

Under the stairs

Or else received

Swept into the grand hall

One among that silent crowd

Waiting to receive the Lord 

 

On His Feast Day Valentine

The secret of St. Paul

Who revealed the secret 

Along with his flair for words

And the music of his speech

Was his willingness to travel

To wander the sea without a home

Think of the kind of thinking

He could do hunched in the prow

Of some ship searching the horizon

In calm and in storms

Asleep or in conversation

With the Lord his companion 

What he would write

When he got there

If it would be understood

I wonder how many of his letters

Went astray like the ones

He wrote to us still 

Arriving still unread 

 

Goodbye At The Vet's Valentine

She was the cat

That came to dinner

And stayed for breakfast

For fourteen years

So we fed her though

She never let us touch

Her claws always at the ready

What could we do

We were her prisoners

When it got colder we

Converted an ice chest

Into a heated cabin for her

Lined with old pajamas

At some point she became

A professor of humility

At the local university

At least that was her story

She just wanted to be loved

And still be wild and free

So we loved her as if

We ever had a choice 

Enclosed Valentine

Noted this morning

Every few seconds

A drop of water falls

From the corner of 

The roof my heaven

Distilled from the cold

Night meeting the sun-

Warmed air I suppose

Since there's been no rain

A few clear drops falling

But not so fast I can't

Catch my own true likeness

There for a moment enclosed

Staring back at me

Holding the sun as it falls 

One Heart Valentine

It only takes one human heart

To account for the whole world

Everything necessary is there

To explain how it all

Got started in the foundries 

Of the gods how to wrap

A flame in streams of iron

Folding and folding it over

Pounding and pounding it

Plunging it into the water

Until it sings on its own 

As the earth feeds our hearts

So our hearts feed the earth

We re-gift what we receive

I trade my heart for yours

Who knew these dying leaves

Were plotting another flower 

I Almost Make it Valentine

A child singing in the refrigerator

The sound of me trying to breath 

I almost make to the last notes 

Before the coughing craters the song

It's as if my lungs are rejecting

Earthly air for some stronger stuff

So the more I breath it in

The more it chokes me out

By the end of the week

I'm completely wrung out

Waiting for the medicine to kick in

Laying here listening to the wind 

Who knew you could make it back

On the music of passing birds 

Epiphany Valentine

Mostly sick through the Holy Nights

Barely able to stay awake 

I was given a series of dreams 

Called 'The Science of Manipulation'

Anecdotes and instructions on how

Even intelligent people can be

Used and played to some end

In personal and professional situations

Painful to watch go on so long

And always come to such sorrow

In the very last classes

You were tested on the strength

Of the cleverness of your lies 

And failed if you believed a single one