The Quiet Part Out Loud

The world as we knew it 

stopped today 

as though after

always having turned right,

it now turns the other way.

Things that grew by light

now evolve in shadow.

The flowers have agreed

 to grow regardless, 

glad of our absence. 

From now on

the dogs will feed us

in lieu of our tricks

both bacchanal

and banal,

but for a bone

rather than sticks.

I take up painting stones

to pass the time away,

as clocks are no longer

in need of my service.

Left to our own devices,

we’re allowed to be right

only twice a day.

I should have known

my nightmares 

were in preparation

for emotions 

I never thought I’d feel.

I’m like a bird

caught in a room.

I keep flying

into the mirror

as if it’s space 

were real.

I should never have

taken my twin 

for granted

as now he’s 

up and foresaking me

and recanted

along with any pre-natural 

penchant for rhyme,

without me he’d hardly know 

what to do with his time.

They say we all have it

whether we know it or not.

Even if we don’t know we have it

we can still give it to others…a lot.

Maybe this is after all…

all from a bump on the head.

If hindsight is twenty twenty,

why couldn’t we have contracted

joy instead?

I recently read a piece

on the poet Keats.

It said he aspired

to what he called

negative capability.

When one is

capable of being

in uncertainties,

mysteries, doubts,

without any 

irritable reaching

after facts and reason;

perhaps this is, afterall,

that preeminent season.

Peter Valentyne

April 2020 in the time of Corona