Anna wakes at quarter to five,

naked,

- except, perhaps, for a Back on Track

somewhere on her 64 years -

sneaks up,

putting on something light & thin,

which in the upper part closes

with a quick zipper rasp;

in my minute of half-awareness interpreted

as a promise of the constancy of safe repetition

and the day's fresh attempt at living,

before I sink back into continued sleep,

like a full-rigged East Indiaman lowering itself

into the observer's slow horizon,

while Anna assists with the eventual props of dreams

through small noises downstairs

and her steps creaking in the snow outside

during the morning horse routines,

followed by the departure

of the heavy Japanese four-wheel drive

towards the scaled-down physiotherapy work

at Sunderby Hospital,

or the sporadic teaching

of the physiotherapy students of the year

at Luleå University of Technology, 40 miles away,

as the night starts craving the title of dawn

When I wake a couple of hours later,

December darkness still tightly embraces

intentions and the memento mori

that – every morning – strokes my 74-year-old

horizontal plane with the fur,

while I stick my hands under the weight of the covers,

inside the merino longjohns,

feeling on either side of the warm physicality

I navigate, called Body,

to again confirm its expanse in hips & thighs;

to re-experience its warmth,

which is the tactile energy-language's translation

of metabolism and manageable ways of living,

as well as an apt reply to the planet's gravity,

until I let the entire machinery of movement creak to life

towards the white porcelain urine delivery

across the hall,

and the intake of 10 mg of Omeprazole

and a mouthful of water,

after which I, like an early commuter shuttle's back & forth

between Uppsala & Stockholm,

return to bed for a while,

maybe accompanied by Yi-Fu Tuan's Space & Place,

Conlin Heylin's The Double Life of Bob Dylan II

or Solvej Balle's Calculation of Volume, Vol. 2,

while a Cosmos of Reality and its lover Unreality

sing Existence, Materiality & Lack of Intent,

to my already excessive allowance,

in a Life & a World

where War & Genocide are the salt we sprinkle

in Humanity's Wounds,

millennium after millennium;

dismembered body parts fertilizing the expanses

of the Earth

in Hieronymus Bosch-detailed agonies;

the god nailed in Homo sapiens' heavy fantasies

about illogical forgiveness

in grotesque communion cannibalisms;

Hitler & Netanyahu blood brothers in Jerusalem & Khan Yunis