Gaudete Sunday Valentine

The first music wasn't just the trees

Though they tried to reassemble it

It must have been they who suggested

How to capture it on paper 

Don't you remember that first sound

That solitary mineral vowel

Doesn't it seem symphonic to you now

When you reach back to hear its

Faint echo in your blood

That pulsing muddy sound

Only the earth could utter

In the last minutes of its travail 

How it pleaded and pleaded

And finally that song came down 

 

My Mind's Valentine

A warehouse at the edge of town

Is how I think of my mind

Or a thousand coins dug up

Buried in Roman times

Or a little girl walking to school 

In freezing morning light 

Or a hiker fallen

In a sunny canyon 

Waiting to be found

But mostly it's just

A stretch of beach

Where it has gone

To meet a certain friend

A love without an end 

Not Yet Valentine

For the third morning in a row

What sounds like rain on my roof

A large flock of starlings

Landing and walking around

And then as one in a whoosh

They ascend leaving behind

A silence so profound

I'm left shaken dumbfound

Feeling strangely blessed

On that first day I was outside

And watched them all descend

Amazed and somewhat alarmed

But on the second and the third 

Day when they returned I knew

Something heavenly was meant

To take me with them when they went

New Songs Valentine

Why do the birds

Stick to their clans

Why not intermarry

The sparrow with

The hummingbird

A fluttering unicorn 

Could birth and what

New songs would come 

From the pink flamingo

Wrapped in the icy swan

A flicker's squawk 

Seduced by a lark

Or a shuddering  peacock

Humbled by a handsome hawk 

Certain Valentine

At a certain spot in the yard

A fragrance stopped me 

The body of a spirit

I could not identify at first

No flower but a scent

Standing waiting there

To be inhaled the way

You lift an old shirt

Of someone gone to taste

Their perfumed sweat again

Still lingering there

Notes of myrrh and woodbine

From the work of days

Receive my happy tears 

Gaudete Valentine

Over the last few weeks 

Of her long pregnancy

She grew weary 

Carrying about

So much joy

And silent worry

The child turning

Inside her nudging

Its way forward

Whispered to her

Do not be afraid

See I have ten fingers

And ten toes a heart

To fill the world

Yourself my child 

Bestial Valentine

Somehow this cat insists

On sitting on my lap

And purring heavily

And reaching up one paw

To touch my neck

With a single claw

As if to say I could

Kill you but I can't

I adore you so much

The beast in me to which

You seem divine

Laid down like a lamb

And I don't dare to move

So close to love 

Sun's Valentine

Carried up and down

By the seriousness of the sun

As we are every day

Bouncing on this slow-motion

Trampoline of the earth

Taking a trouncing 

And finally lying down flat

So our dreams can filter down

And the stars restore us

To some semblance of ourselves

Ready or unready for the world

It's just that I think of us all

Every morning waking up and

Send you greetings from my soul 

Dan's Valentine

I love the fall best of all

More than winter's shimmer 

Or summer's thrall

But fall when spring

Comes back to settle

In a pool of leaves

All its suns delivered

All its courage spent

On a few brave seeds

All its promises kept

For a few sunny days

New life old death

Dancing together again

Without a care in the world

In a clearing in the woods 

Intended Valentine

The invention of the material world

Was always a delicate operation

The great had to want to become

Smaller and smaller

Light squeezed into bodies

From the outset a painful

And yet exuberant process

Of dissolving and giving birth 

And frequently they must 

Have to stand back in wonder 

At what they're painting

With their brilliant colors seeing

If they're still on the right track

To the masterpiece they intended 

Inevitable Valentine

If there is only one consciousness

What is this purple flower doing here

This flesh and bones

Don't we have to imagine 

The mind that made it

Dissatisfied with being just air

Deciding to draw real leaves

A material flower

A body to be loved

And cast aside

Time devouring time

Consciousness opening its mouth

So wide it encompasses

Us all in one gulp 

Once Loved Valentine

The thought of you dropped into my head

And immediately a mockingbird

Landed right in front of me

Glanced at me and hurried off

Scratching in the grass then gone

But not before I recognized 

You'd heard me and sent this bird 

To show me one of the things 

You've become living on the other side 

That you are never far away

Even when I forget to think

How once loved there remains

An abiding connection

An immediate reply

Out of a blue sky 

My Teacher's Valentine

Assembling my unruly thoughts

The practical comes first 

I try to focus on the rhythm

Of their confusion like a classroom

Of raucous kids before the teacher

Walks in and they all rush

To take their places

Three Greek words

Are written on the board

But no hands go up

To say what they mean

And the teacher wrapped

Up in some poem is staring

Out the window again 

Gene's Valentine

Even when it's cold out he drives

With all the windows down 

He claims it's his Ukrainian childhood 

He can't get enough fresh air 

A friend of a friend I don't

See him often now or ride

In the van his father left him

Before his mother died

Through the freezing streets 

As much as my imagination wants to

The cold exciting him

To stories of warm bread

Baking every morning

Going down to fetch some