The Man Who Could

Shed His Skin

He, for reasons of anonymity,

must remain a fiction.

A mermaid once 

got hold of him

by the wrist,

pulling him down 

to the depths

as he gasped 

for breath.

In order to escape 

he managed to 

change himself into water,

slipping through fingers

with the mutability

of an acorn 

on its way

to an oak. 

From then on,

for him,

to love or be loved

was a brush with death.

He turned up in Sausalito 

with a new name 

and a cobbled backstory.

For all anyone knew

 he’d washed up on the shore

beneath the Golden Gate bridge

uncertain of how else

to begin another life

as every name 

and job he took

was a cover.

Seven names

in forty years 

because he couldn’t stay

put when he became 

too involved. 

Why did he always leave

something behind

for someone who might

care to trace his steps

and find his typewriter

buried in the desert outside Vegas,

a sweater he’d seen on a movie star

abandoned on the backseat of a bus, 

a cell phone hurled into the Hudson,

a plate of food half eaten,

the fork and spoon missing?

Even though like anybody else

he needed to be cared about,

he’d come to believe

there was no way to stay

without changing.

After two years in Los Angeles 

he bought a motor bike

and rode up the coast to Bodega Bay

where Hitchcock filmed The Birds.

He took polaroids of the school house

where Tippi sat on a bench

 in front of the monkey bars,

dark birds casually amassing.

Later he would draw the birds in

on the photos with a black magic marker 

invigorated to feel a part 

of an apocalypse.

Nature understood him,

but no one else could.

Next time he was sure 

to cover his tracks.

Perhaps by taking a job 

in public service

his heart might serve

something other than itself.

That way he could easily

be lost in the fray;

anonymity as a 

survival tactic.

You barely noticed him as he 

passed you on the promenade

in faded jeans and hay-colored hair

swigging on a diet soda

as if he’d other plans despite

your obvious mutual attraction. 

He had to be somewhere

or you’d have shared 

a lifetime together.

One time he made the mistake 

of sheltering a stray dog

which culminated in being

waylaid for 15 years

because in an animal

it became possible

to care for himself.

Still, his mind couldn’t let go

of the notion that puppies

were born adorable merely

to assure survival,

and so 

on it’s death, 

he left.

More and more it was crucial

to make good use of oneself.

It’s no wonder 

he wound up in New York City.

He loved nothing

more than to dance

but avoided the clubs 

for fear of where dancing 

might lead.

When he danced 

it became clear 

every person is 

indistinguishable

from the vibration 

that creates all things. 

His goal was innocence,

no matter how many lives 

he would lead

or how many people 

might possess him. 

He’d begun to ask himself, 

how other than by pain

could God gain his attention?

Now he will need to be vulnerable.

He is older and as life dictates,

less shall want him.

Peter Valentyne

April 12th, 2021

A

Life

Made 

of Wood

I am birch

in a grove of cedar.

My roots can

strangle plumbing

as easily as

a stone

in ardor.

No matter 

how I am used

or misused,

my nature remains.

Hands know me

by touch as

I comfort the blind

by reverberation.

I am a chair

built to

 uphold Kings 

and naives alike.

I am all arms

reaching upwards

to the sun

as a God.

I live by the same

properties

that form

a prayer.

I am a table

inviting kinship

with speech

humming in the grain

like a blood.

I am a ladder

for climbing

fruit trees.

Not just that.

I am

apple and acorn,

balsam, oak, willow,

and palm.

Maple, pine, bamboo,

sandalwood and 

the Lord’s psalm.

My fate

lies in

servitude;

walking sticks,

tooth picks,

wooden legs,

begging bowls,

pencils and mortars,

I am

the pages of

every book;

mine is a life

to be written

upon.

Christ was nailed

to me after

carrying my diary

on his back

through the streets

of Golgotha.

I am 

human wood.

My death

still lighting up

the dark.

Good Friday, 2021

Peter Valentyne

The Salt of Sorrow

“Have salt in yourselves, 

and be at peace with one another.”

~Mark 9:50

“I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow

and called out, ‘It tastes sweet, does it not?’

‘You’ve caught me,’ grief answered, 

‘and you’ve ruined my business. How

can I sell sorrow, when you know it’s

a blessing?’”

~Rumi

Sorrow is a salt, 

it flavors things. 

Better yet,

salt brings out 

the flavors

of the things

themselves.

It’s a taste that 

raises the bland 

to new heights. 

Salt endears

me to the world. 

It helps me

feel empathy. 

It provides 

context and scale

by its sheer

presence. 

It levels the field 

of my inner life,

disallowing me 

to become coarse 

or callow when 

life is good. 

When life is 

difficult, it

invigorates 

by preserving

the essence

of what I love

like an insect

in amber;

a lozenge

in the mouth

that sweetens

the world

by slowly 

dissolving.

Sorrow tenderizes

all it touches.

It acknowledges that

loss is the shadow

of gain, of

gifts that age.

It understands

all things pass

even as it

captures their essence

by enhancing

their capacity.

Sorrow, like salt,

came early,

a full moon

advancing stories.

The salt of sorrow

softened me

like a hide.

I can love

anything now

because I know 

that such grief

creates hunger 

for beauty

in the world.

March 31st, 2021

 

Switzerland

Everything was possible 

in the mountains of Switzerland.

Or so I thought.

At seventeen I found myself on a train 

leaving Zurich and heading through the Alps 

toward the monastery town of Eisendeln. 

My head shaved, my army-green Smith Corona 

abandoned back at the hotel, my feet worn-out

from wandering a foreign country as a stranger

to everything and everyone.

All I really knew of Switzerland was from

a calendar picture of the Swiss Mountains

that had hung in my mother’s kitchen

where a steeple rose up from a glade

beside a stream. That and having seen

The Sound of Music as a child, I knew

it had been over the Alps that the Von Trapps

had escaped to safety. Also Heidi’s crippled

friend learned to walk again 

because the mountain air and water

were so crystalline it had brought

feeling back to her legs.

In Switzerland, clouds were decidedly more vivid,

the sky able to make as much sense beneath you

as above. Reflection is the key to Switzerland.

Maybe that’s why I had imagined

a sanitarium nestled in a valley

surrounded by fiords where tubercular patients 

could rest in chairs beneath fruit trees 

after taking too much sun,

their sensitivities heightened by the altitude,

their perceptions becoming so in tune with the purpose

of the honey bees drawing sustenance from

the field flowers that it would cause their conditions 

to resolve themselves as readily as ice melts at the touch.

Here, away from the things of man

it was possible to live in a constant state

of astonishment, where miracles

were as common as the re-emergence

of caterpillars unfurling their wings.

Hot air balloons were surely the mode of travel

in Switzerland,

a place without magazines or cigarettes,

junk food, or car accidents, pollution or murders,

or robbery, wars or famine, or homelessness,

a place where no one is poor, starving 

or down on their luck, or ever depressed

because everything is curable

by taking a walk or opening a window.

Switzerland was where you went when

you’d grown tired of the ways of the world,

a place where thoughts found diamond-like clarity.

A place where I, muted by depression and emboldened

by heartache, was to find what I’d been looking for.

However, not before asking myself

if it were possible to run towards something

without running away from something else.

At seventeen I'd come to kill myself in Switzerland;

a place whose natural beauty

could never be more affecting than when

apprehended by a broken heart.

March 29th, 2021