On the Yoga Mat
Today I lie in a pause
in the usual blinkered everydayness
on the yoga mat up in the study,
with my honorary mother-in-law’s blanket over me
and a spiked massage ball, 19 cm in diameter,
under my head, seventy-seven years in the body;
Bob Dylan
working his way through Blonde on Blonde
over by the desk
”...me, I expected it to happen...”, he shouts
But in all the tracks there are so many,
”...caught without a ticket...”,
for instance Judy, the solidarity-bound lawful wife for seven years,
picked up, apparently by pure coincidence,
in Breezewood, Pennsylvania, in March 1977,
I on my way back from Dylan’s turrets & towers
in Malibu, California,
to my friend Bob Goldman at 226 E 89th St in Manhattan;
she on her way from her parents at 6814 Cherokee Drive in Baltimore
to her apartment in Pittsburgh,
duly joined in marriage to me for ten dollars
by a Justice of the Peace
in a basement in the Records Building, Dallas, July 1978,
within rifle range of JFK’s sudden death
fifteen years earlier
”...I didn't mean to make you so sad
you just happened to be there, that's all...”
...her arm around my torso,
her soft nightgown against my back,
our completely silent sleep
in the sacred seven-ness of the years,
distributed between Texas and Södermanland,
her solidarity bridging every difficulty,
her self-appointed wifely duty following the madman
back and forth on immense 747s across the Atlantic,
again and again in 1980,
when my soul’s faculties darkened,
stretched to the breaking point between continents
”...and I say, oh, c'mon now...”
...and I let the misfortunes kill us
again,
in images sailing through the room like avenging angels,
when she who was is not;
laid in Maryland soil in 2009,
not one of the stones on her gravestone from me
”...if you want to see the sunrise,
honey, I know where...”
...and everything that might have been done differently...
...but could it?
I would have found new ways of doing wrong, no doubt...
The record keeps spinning
”...nobody knows any pain,
tonite as I stand inside the rain...”
...and he who has supplied all the departed years
with their soundtracks
hangs in the balance now,
eighty-five in May,
and I let all the dead and the almost living
come to audience
here on the yoga mat March 6, 2026,
in devastating examples of a presence that never runs dry,
and wounded love
laying bare the body on the yoga mat
and its time
”...with your eyes like smoke, and your prayers like rhymes,
and your silver cross, and your voice like chimes...”
Poetry by Ingvar Loco Nordin
Written on 2026-03-06 at 15:26
Save as a bookmark (requires login) Write a comment (requires login) Send as email (requires login) Print text
