The Uninhabitability
of Yesterday's News

We’d be fools

to reduce

the stars to

poetic constraints,

and the moon

could do worse

than go on

highlighting 

our lives

from afar,

swooning

half hearted, 

chock-full of

unwarranted envy,

yet, yesterday

I came across

the meaning

of the Greek word

for metaphor,

simply put:

“to carry”,

and

because my mind

is a tongue

unable to leave  

a wound in

the mouth

alone,

my thoughts

probe the roof

of their cave

like a blind worm

impatient for 

flight.

Aren’t you

flummoxed by 

the self same
riddle?

 Finding

yourself

 feeling the unthinkable

as though you'd

previously

behaved a

perspective tourist

incapable of

summoning

your own

history’s

native tongue.

I’m sure of 

this:

we mustn't let go

of a single 

opportunity 

to love,

like the dog

I adored

who'd never

chosen to leave me
on his own,

practiced as he
was

in negotiating
my shadow.

I ask you:

If molecules 

cannot be destroyed,

only transformed,

how then are

any of us

different

from the 

snowmen

being

slowly undone 

by the sun?

The coal, 

the carrot,

the scarf;

mere

souvenirs of

temporary

selfhood.

Time

now appears

 a slippery slope

and I am

clinging again

to my sled,

swooshing

downhill toward

the origin

of all things,
heart beating

with imaginal wings

against 
the wood slats

of my first
and only

Fearless Flyer.

Who’d have thought 

growing old 

could have us

feeling like

children again,

tooth tethered to

a door knob,

forced to

improvise

our first act of

self preservation:

the stopping 
of time.

It would take

the rest of our lives

to master

anything  

so wistful.

Who could help
revisiting

that brazen act of

suspended imagination
even in the

here and now,

tethered to 

the past

by the thread

of a kite

cobbled out of

yesterday’s

uninhabitable 

news?

Peter Valentyne

December 12th, 2019