Love in the Time of Corona

I woke up at 4:00 AM 

determined to make something. 

I got up because I had 

to give art it’s chance to heal. 

Though nothing I do is uncreative, 

it feels as though I am 

married to the world 

solely to love and be loved. 

Yet the world lies asleep in its bed. 

Or so it seems.

How do we go about our days 

sans business as usual? 

My habits feel like shadows 

without a source of light. 

And so I vow to change my ways. 

I am looking into how 

to make a flower from scratch. 

I am my own bit of earth. 

Must everything have a wretched fate? 

The artist always says no. 

I don’t want to get up, 

I want to rise.

 Am I interesting enough to be spared? 

I want to be worth living.  

I began this odyssey 

with a bout of spring cleaning...

unearthing several forgotten treasures. 

A photo of my mother 

as a pretty young girl. 

A nude self portrait in colored pencil. 

A blank unused journal.

My cat, keeps kneading the armchair 

as though desperate for milk. 

I too wish for milk from a chair. 

I’m struck by her dance 

in this strange trance state. 

What do I do like that? 

Where am I so unconscious and why? 

Familiarity breeds contempt, 

but I barely feel it. 

I want to wake up...

but in such a scary time. 

What a fine time to come to my senses! 

But I know waking will make a difference. 

Here in my home of carefully arranged junk

in hopes of becoming content and unafraid. 

My cat is my shepherd and I shall not want.

Our lives are without rules 

though full of laws, I think

this illness must mean something. 

But so far it is like a forest in a film, 

provocative even as it smells of nothing. 

The old ways no longer suffice. 

So now, every morning, 

I go in search of Easter 

to make my days worthwhile. 

Why then do I feel 

locked inside an unnatural history museum? 

I want to make a stunning new thing 

and call it “Today”. 

But first I have to reckon, 

no grapple, with the old ways as

they no longer work in the here and now. 

The usual balms have lost their salt. 

Is this room nothing more than a body 

held together by standing so still?

I want to trade in my television for a God. 

I want to go pagan in an unfurnished room 

where a potted plant

is a much needed nod to all that is wild.

I put the picture of my mother 

in a frame so she can’t desert me. 

The kitchen sink is a Walden’s pond 

I can barely make out my reflection in. 

So I start to write...

each line requiring an open heart surgery. 

My first and last hope is to recover. 

Can one get salt water from a tap? 

I must make something out of this nothing. 

A cake from homemade flour. 

I want to die by a river, not a faucet!  

I don’t want to get up...

I want to rise. 

I want an art that will 

save me with its urgency. 

And save us all as well.

Peter Valentyne

St. Patrick’s Day 2020