Sometimes I retreat,

read Jacques Dropsy,

become all body,

creaking at the joints,

pulsating down the intestines, metabolised,

flowing with the flow of hormones,

kept att reasonable bay by gravity

and a crude life expectancy,

an Easter Island statue by the typewriter;

no identity making a mess

The Lady roams the estate,

clinging to these pale, torn remains

of a good-old-used-to-be

that can only diminish,

while her frustration at age

and a cold house

is masquerading as the strong will

of a damn-and-darn personality,

making her ever chillier

and more dissociated,

keeping horses as forced thoughts

on her way

down her personalised slippery slope,

while I sometimes find myself calculating

the cost of a moving van

from these parts, 1000 kilometers south

Now, when I've entrusted so much

to the notebooks,

death has to remain unwritten,

and I purchase supreme quality gray yarn

and watch the Lady peacefully knit

a warm, no bullshit custom woollen sweater for me,

explicitly without any patterns of any kind;

a sweater to live in, to work the farm in,

to think long thoughts in,

to wear down like time wears me down,

and time has already worn my face a long while

Snow has fallen for days on end,

and we've been skiing the blizzards

across the lakes,

visibility kept at a minimum,

faces shielded and windproof

One morn at first light

I saw a red fox trip across my field of vision,

by the forest at the horses' meadow's far end;

a rare furred sighting of the shy one

which we have named Yannis

and usually just see the tracks of in the snow;

a long winding line of paw tracks from the preceding night

Simultaneously, a woodpecker banged away

at some frozen nutrients at the bird feeder

outside the kitchen window,

me barefoot on the cold kitchen floor,

face reflected in the window,

imagining my body burning explosively

at its cremation;

a happy thought of incineration

of all concerns

dancing in a thousand tongues of fire

deep in the roar of Kali;

the dark dismissal

of Creation's egotism