The Reformation

“How disquieting it is to feel, 

how troubling to think, how vain to want!”  

                            ~Fernando Pessoa

I must let myself happen.

But I construct anyway

everything I can.

Days do not add up 

to anything lengthwise.

My only measure is vertical.

I can’t make happiness

by wanting it. I must

instead

surrender to 

what I can’t make happen.

Live with myself without it,

or you, or the certainty of others.

This moment is a crucible,

I have two choices:

Accept or invent.

How to make love with

absentia? How to make

peace with the fleeting

impermanence of 

everything I was.

My heart is muscular,

my mind, not so much.

Everything I do is to

escape a tyranny:

mine or another’s.

I am an immigrant

in my own country;

a country of constructs.

I make my deconstruction

taut, and without sentiment.

In order to take in

the most that I can,

I am a drum…

hollow, without strings,

aligned with the heartbeat

of my God.

Peter Valentyne

January 22, 2019