The Caretaker

of Octobers

(for Peggie)

Her lamp-filled house 

can make you cry

as easily as trees

lose their leaves.

Here in her heart’s museum

where everything she loves

has a place graced by light.

Only our dreams are

as vivid as her memories,

while our love 

must live at night,

content with tatters.

By contrast,

we live facing backward

surrendered 

in a compartment 

on a train hurtling 

toward the end 

of the line.

By virtue of being 

borne in this car

we persist by rushing 

toward 

what is behind us

through mercurial landscapes 

with no room for who we were.

Holding onto furniture

in the dark is how

her mind has kept its place.

Our dreamscape scenery 

makes its own

sense of beauty.

Her desire to keep

everything that touches her

is how our passing

will bring no emptiness

we’ve not already allowed.

Lately, every hour

gathers

our habitual stories

like belongings for disposal.

The ones that placed

us at the center

seem already out of reach. 

Whereas

her last desire

is a caretaker’s desire:

to be here and now

and at the same time

in love

with going away.

Peter Valentyne

October 2018

A Remedy for Happiness

I was murdered by my first love

at the un-ripe age of seventeen.

As far as I know, 

he’s still out there

unaware that my slow death

was not an end in itself.

Memories of early happiness

still stalk me, arriving unannounced

and unwanted often when

I’m engaged in small tasks

like chopping carrots or 

retrieving the mail.

That’s when I hide.

This has been my story,

a story I never meant to stick with.

The fact that I am still here

is testament to how I managed

to jump my narrative tracks.

I had to do something

because being dead is no way to live.

I did everything but change my name

though I might as well have.

You’ll find my palette lacks a color

I will never go back to.

Though when I see it

and its everywhere in nature,

there is no escaping 

it’s unassuming violence.

But few take time to notice

my absence of green.

One time happiness rushed 

up on me in Central Park

as if hiding behind a tree.

It threw me to the ground

and pushed my face 

against grass and stones.

It left a mark for days.

There is nowhere it can’t find me.

Are we all being so

tracked and snared?

I can’t be the only one.

Let’s face it,

if I had and wanted it,

or even let it,

I couldn’t have written this

to warn you.

Peter Valentyne

August 2018