Hanky Panky (II)
Silver & Cesi go out barefoot
in −14°C,
the first cold snap of autumn in Norrbotten
It’s November 11, the day itself dressed in a loden coat,
a hunting rifle slung over its shoulder, glasses fogged
and I remember Dennis Johnson’s piano work NOVEMBER,
more than seven hours long in Nicolas Horvath’s recording —
sparse, unhurried, lingering, protracted, introverted, stripped bare,
its naked branches’ resigned invoko
reduced to calligraphic surrender
before the pale light;
each tone a solitary being,
wrapped in contemplative fingerings,
only now and then, by sheer coincidence,
coming together in chords —
like people at a bus stop
or in an emergency ward,
their coats damp with the season and its meagre light;
the wingspans of airplanes dripping with humidity
out at Skavsta Airport,
or duly de-iced at Luleå’s Kallax
But the breathing is pleasantly sodden
and saturated,
and the day calm and country-direct
awaiting the predicted afternoon snowfall,
the first of the season,
as Cesi & Silver come back inside
with cold in their fur and icy paw pads
after a brief, futile watch
by the wire-enclosed bird feeder —
great tits, tree sparrows, blue tits, nuthatches,
willow tits, crested tits, greenfinches, redpolls,
siskins and others —
the cats immediately fully absorbed
in their bowls in the hallway,
before they each choose a window sill
for a few hours of meditative vigilance
over the house’s surroundings,
until the afternoon darkness soon descends
and their reflections in the triple glazing
reveal the threefoldness of their felinic characters,
while,
deep within the piano’s lofty latticework,
there can be heard,
far away in the United States of America,
a repeated phrase, shrill, cocky:
“My baby does the Hanky Panky!”
Poetry by Ingvar Loco Nordin
Written on 2025-11-11 at 11:49
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