Precocious Valentine

When I was five and some

I walked to the lake alone

Across three busy streets

And a bridge over the tracks

And was later found

Playing on the sand

Where I had spent the day

Asking for food from strangers

Or when I needed something to drink

Convincing them my parents

Were just there down the beach

Was I dreaming or lying

It felt so free to be on my own

Making it up as I went along

But all I remember about that day

Besides the terror of my mother

Going on in the background

Was a long conversation with the lake

In which I learned you too were

In the world and I would find you

Shakespearean Valentine

Among evil's bad actors death is not one

Though it's been made to play the part

It's the adventures that lead up to it

Let's face it along the way

That we must want something for ourselves

As much as those who follow us

The empty stage is full of exits

And burgeoning with entrances

If in every death we die

In every life we are born

A sober ecstasy in the sense

That this contingency holds sway

Night following day.

Longing Valentine

Humanity is so positioned on the scale

That it receives the glory of a night

And of a day with willful precision 

Something clearly coherent at work

Especially where they coalesce

The mythic light and the sacred darkness

If you picture them as the actual beings

We know them to be the last

Reflections of a pair

Of brothers or sisters

Who go their separate ways

With their knives at twilight

And their kisses at dawn

How long can this go on

Longer Valentine

I will probably be late for heaven

I love the earth so much

It's where everything happens first

Like New York or Alexandria in the day

Surrounded by its mysteries and dramas

And so many things to read about

And to experience it all takes time

But there are no books or time in heaven

So one has to be read to like a child

Stories that give strength to growing bones

Until one feels the earth is turning a corner

And beginning its sure ascent

To becoming a star or a sun

And one just wants to stay with it

And be in its company a little longer

Poems Just Want To Be Prayers Valentine

Come now sun

Warm thou me

A night of jigsaw dreams

In which I'm awake amazed

And just stand there watching

The pieces clumsily at first

Put themselves together

I see I'm not just myself

But someone else who watches me

Whom I already am becoming

It's a scene of the Rockies

Or the Carpathians in spring

I was taking pictures of myself

It could be a desert or a lake

Crying Valentine

Today the dove's cry is a muffled caw

The crow's complaint what

The dove was forced to say

If you put the sounds of birds together

All over the world at once

Would it be an Aum

You would hear or the alarm

Going off on that last morning

I mean the rhetorical dove's

And the shiny articulate crow's cries

Who fly off in opposite directions

All their flights leading far away

Leaving us in the silence awake

With nothing but the possible to do

And only the impossible to do it with

Near-by Valentine

Breakfast this morning is watching

Three ring-necked doves crowding

The birdbath with their plumpness

Just outside my window and then

A helping of bread and juice

While I read your emailed dream

Chiding myself for too little

Water in the birdbath

Barely enough for a sip or two

But they as always seemed content

If not satisfied with my intention

And your near-by words of love

That always make me smile

Outlived Valentine

The only question is

Will we be rescued

Or are we already doomed

To be rescued again

Again and again

There's an invincibility

About life that can't

Be grasped by time

The only place

Death could survive

Death that delicate flower

Slowly growing extinct

Having outlived its usefulness

Rescued Valentine

If I sit out in the sun too long

Brooding over the sun's old songs

And I bake and I seethe

Until I become a flame

Please come get me

Please collect the feeble ash

Of my arms and put them

Around you still burning

To be touched again

Again and again

While love passes through

The guest of my heart

Who comes and goes

Refining me to gold

In his own sweet time

Now's Valentine

I resume the now in a shower

Of memories like a swimmer

Turning his head to breath

Before ducking back down

Into the wavy current

So more is lost than seen

In the forward motion

And the now become something snatched

From the surrounding sea of the past

As his arms propel his head ahead

And his feet emit dissolving circles

So the now becomes something

He swims toward suspended

Which he knows is there

Whenever he breaks the surface

And sees the next wave looming

The Elementals Singing to the Thrones Valentine

Come sit with me in the sunlight

And sense how the earth under our feet

Rays back its growing glow

From fires raging in its depths

How something moves between them

That intersects in us

Between the cold abstractions up there

And the burning at the stake down here

See how warmth as love's

First instinct was to build

A heart for it a home

And then come sit with me

In the shadows where the gods gather

To take another breath

And go on singing us their song

Epiphanous Valentine

Even if you think it's only a story

Wouldn't you need to ask yourself

Where such a story could come from

And what such a story contains

Even as a lexicographer of the mind

Or an absent member of the jury

You'd have to admit in the end

There is some magic here some light

But no point looking for causes

Let's just focus on effects

Does it change everything for you

Does it go straight to the bone

Does it raise you from the dead

Sounded Valentine

He did not hand her a letter

That happens in another story

But it was the same magic they wore

Those messengers of glory

To us who were only waiting

To be overwhelmed at last

By what we always wanted

Just to be loved so we

Ourselves could learn to speak

Its rugged language one day

Fluently with a feel for the vowels

And how the tongue rolls

In the mouth how the lips

Shape the meaningless sounds

Prologue in Heaven Valentine

In the beginning was Wisdom

And Wisdom was the mirror of God

And Wisdom was both uncreated

And yet created out of nothing

She did not create God

But was herself the image of God

In the process of creating all things

Among which was his first likeness

Through whom the world was given life

And the mirror was broken

And we became the scattered pieces

Which Wisdom is still gathering

But God did not look away

For she was the woman he mirrored

His gaze was fixed upon her

The beginning of all love

Tolstoyan Valentine

All good thinking is alike

But because it's a mixture of both

All bad thinking is different

I thought I swallowed a sharp

Piece of plastic I thought of it

Swimming around in my gut

While I was eating a piece of cake

I stared into the darkness

Of my imaginary death

Trying to compose myself

To console myself there was still

The sweetness of life in my mouth

And then you in the foreground

Holding up that little piece of plastic

Between your sweet fingers

Flowery Valentine

Whose preciosity

Is overcome only

By their sincerity

These flowers all flowers

Their impossibility

Their resurrection

Before dying and dying

Their necessary happenstance

Their staged insouciance

Coming right up to the edge

Of some immaculate conception

Of what reality can make

Out of a colorful imagination

Their implications

Needed Valentine

What is needed is the sun on Sunday

To rise above that churchly dome

Of clouds and fill this chair

Where I am waiting in the cold

Fading moonlight shadows

For my constellation to arrive

If I look through the dark earth

I can see it on the other side

Where summer has gone

But the past can only grow

What it plants as they sang

So I sit waiting for the sun

To fill me to the bone

Mute Valentine

One can speak frankly to a cat

Or a mirror or the open air

One can confess everything to a tree

And give it back its penance

But to you I bring the silence

Of my tamed excuses

One could have loved you more

One could not have

How can we both be true

When I'm the one

Who wronged you

No cat can say that

Or wall and still

You loved me back

Clairvoyant Valentine

I don't want

Second vision

So much as 

The first vision

Of you strolling

In a bee-line

Toward my mind

Though you were not

Aware of it

At the time

And I was 

Pretending along

That's what we do

Us lovers

We bring love

Into the world

We harvest it

And store it

For the winters

Moving On Valentine

Staring down the corridors of the future

With the sun behind me rising

So my shadow precedes me

Dodging in and out of other darknesses

Though all the paths lead far away

I still sense you coming toward me

My aimless wandering has not lost you

You invisible one who keeps finding me

Though I keep losing you I go on

Following the shadows of the past

I saw you once so I know you're there

Stars filled the trees the dream was real

Even if only for an instant

Your light illuminating me