In the depths of days

I am my own floating vessel

Thoughts are sudden downpours

of uncomfortable certainties;

for the head what worms are to the stomach

The daily de facto defecation

builds trust for the day

I have toothpicks of birch wood

in a small plastic guksi

in the bedside table drawer,

within convenient reach

after the daily cereal breakfast in bed,

before each morning's meticulous review

of gaps

The two December ravens move

in horizon-wide circles

around the farm,

in noisy clacks and erratic flutters

along the main tracks of the sweep

Marcel Proust lies on a six-part lure,

Part One loosened from the bookshelf gloom,

up under my throat,

while I remember the heavy two-volume version

we received as a wedding gift

from Judy Sands & John Mason

in 1978 in Dallas,

which we later gave away,

along with a sewing machine,

to a couple of Indian women

at a laundromat in Phoenix in 1980

Somewhere these two bound volumes stand,

with dedication,

in someone's reality

Feeding the horses at ten

marks the boundary of the real day

If there's mucking out to be done

and wheelbarrows to be pushed,

I am the spokesman of the past

in outbursting consequences;

the striking talisman in the treasury of thoughts

The horses' grinding jaws hypnotizes away,

fateful in the barely perceived precision of gusts;

an icy cool sliding up the alleyway

The day holds me back from 09:49 to 13:03

My friends are long-distance trust uncertainties

in vulnerabilities beyond reach;

figments of imagination

in thoughts & old photographs

Emails shine like silver plates

in the artist's black

Sudden insights

about evolutionary pain thresholds:

Silk sensations & earth colors

Memories of Camilla Gripe;

valuable thoughts in small glass bottles;

a stove and Firework music

Sune entirely dressed in white,

his jet-black fringe to the side,

love finally allowed;

broken out, unaltered;

his thunderstorm voice

of specially hardened metal

resonating through his whole body,

years curled up in cut corners;

the Immediate, in 1971, on its back

on the rag rug;

a young Eternity dressed in old worlds;

the present a retrospective

of what's happening now;

a memory created in the present,

falling inward, howling outward,

refilled with circumventions & circumlocutions,

cracked in currents of falcon-swift shadows,

hovering considerations;

the solidity's grainy transition

in the sharp grain snow in head-wind faces

over the black-ice lake

The analogies lie ready

like Finnish winter warriors

in the forest edges

I oversee this body

like the farmer his furrows

I lay it fallow;

let empty thoughts rise uninhabited;

let the body rest

like a rotting tree trunk deep in the forest

It's winter;

I pull the blanket of snow over all intentions;

let odd be even,

let the weapons rest, time pass,

just before sorting;

a forgetfulness beyond transience;

an openness greater than the mightiest breath;

wider than the wildest recklessness

Yes, these days that never reach the summit

retreat when night floods in

from all directions with its lanterns,

when the horses stand farthest away

in the pine grove, listening;

the houses dazzling will-o'-wisps

up on rural hilltops

The forest machines

are grotesque glowworms

deep inside the coniferous darkness

I hear the splashing of oceans in my body:

the wreckage rocking

in the Ithacan swell of the cardiovascular system;

the stars casting out in wide galaxy veils

Reality is on its way somewhere

What you think is a visit

from candle-headed Lucia with her entourage

are the brittle bells of tinnitus

embedded in a gentle hum

Slowly time withdraws its hands from you;

the years vanishing with tired steps

in all directions

What was recedes

with an accelerating Universe

The words lack letters;

become bleeding phonemes,

and finally a tone that slowly sinks

into a sensation that is Sea & Night

and an indefinite place in the room