Crumhorn & Caltrops
The kayak hovers
at the meeting point of up-clouds & down-clouds
It is July on Stor-Lappträsket,
and the horizon comes all the way forward;
hovering between the world's initials,
between hyphens & thought-dashes,
so difficult to tell apart
It is July,
and the bridges stand with open jaws
above the rivers;
the stars buried
in the searing truths of the summer night –
of sand
and light,
glowing in the silent-film
of appliance life,
violently silent,
while the Samsung couplings burst
through the television programs
like dripping panic horses
It is July,
and the faces stand enormous above the hills,
drawn tight across gleaming surfaces,
Parkinson-rigid
in shop windows & car lacquer,
like lingering Easter Island statues
The night's moths of riddles slip out of the silence;
distances crawl across the skin;
the creatures play canasta
in the invasive vastness
between then & now,
while the past lies white-speckled in oblivion;
eggshells in a reed organ in the attic
Time keeps itself ornamented
with stone ship settings,
mock executions,
runways,
and fresh blades of grass
in the concrete joints
of the old National Highway One
at Bergshammar;
but the faces have grown too large in the mirrors,
and the voice of the wind
is tireless in the trees
The cats are calling in the stairwell
for my letting-go hands
The day stands tugging at the mooring lines,
and the dawn fenders whimper
against the quay edges
along all the sea margins
of the great wide world
In the background,
grotesque Americans sway past
in their V8s,
inside my reminiscences of the seventies
from the supermarket parking lots
of Dallas;
fat beyond fat
in sticky asphalt summers,
while crumhorns drone
through impermanence;
the narrow road
strewn with caltrops
Poetry by Ingvar Loco Nordin
Written on 2026-07-05 at 11:30
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