While I Valentine

The angels in my yard

Do make lovely things

And it's true I gave them

Free rein inviting them in 

But what they've done

With the space I love while

I wasn't watching I find

Mildly overwhelming 

The agave has given birth

To three little ones the pampas 

Grass is shedding seeds

Mapping out the breeze 

Where these angels hitch a ride

Laughing at all the work they've made 

This Time Valentine

Ours is a slippery world

Hard to know

Where to take hold of it

But when we do find

Something or someone

To love more

Than ourselves

We hold on tightly

We can feel the mountains 

Around us and set up camp 

In a wide open space

This world slips away

All this time under it

This longing to be loved 

Sacred Valentine

I remember as a boy

Candles blessing my throat

A cross of ashes rubbed into

My third eye the taste

Of God coating my tongue 

My poor performance

As an altar boy sneaking

Wine in the sacristy 

The sins I couldn't confess

Lined up like a rosary

The kiss of peace

I was given to carry

And bury to rise again

Running toward it I see

All my life as planned 

Carried Valentine

A gray volcanic head

Rescued from the sea

I brought back to the desert

And set up at my gate

A hole cut out of it

In which a small

White shell has lodged

An eye that looks down

At me when I approach

Of a serpent tamed to stone

I carried back and lifted

Into place to meet

Its determined stare 

Each day as best I can 

Out Of Valentine

The clouds those gods

I hold in high esteem

Night and day passing over 

I think they carry joy

And sadness around

And out of this world

Continually wrestling

With the light or breezily

Sailing across the moon

But when they're gone

The sky is never bluer

The stars never brighter

We see what those gods

Have made glory

Out of sorrow 

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