Ritorno
The cats
demand to be let out into the pouring rain at 11:15 p.m.,
eager & united
at the front door; Silver & Cesi,
and I open it for them
and watch them disappear out of the light,
into the nightblack
I station myself at the living-room windows
on the other side of the house,
my nose against the glass,
trying to see if Dante, the goshawk,
is sitting on the mossy pole
along the wire mesh of the old dog yard,
my breath crowding close around me on the window –
but it is too dark
He ought, in any case, to have sought shelter
in some dense spruce by now
At midday today
we saw him high up,
far away above the forest
in the direction of Mount Snipen,
chased by a gang of small birds;
a shower of jumping peppercorns
around him
beneath the overcast sky
We thought he had left us
for good
and taken to the woods,
but later, in the afternoon;
Anna's cry: Ingvar, he's back!
And there he sat
outside the living room
on the dog-yard fence
combing through his plumage,
as a cat does its fur,
as though it were the most natural thing
in the world!
Then he flew off
and came back,
a couple of times during the afternoon,
only to disappear later, toward evening,
without returning
Now it is night in rain
and I lie flat against the surface of the earth
in a bed intended for that purpose
in the East bedroom upstairs,
swaddled in the roar of the August rain,
thinking of two cats & a goshawk
and life's elaborate wonder,
while the body subsides
& the thoughts settle into their sleeping compartments
awaiting the wild horses of dreams –
but I can write about rain
as long as it rains,
with wet downspout-words,
rivulet-words, storm-drain-words,
harshly whispering,
snorting forest-brook-words,
rubber-boot-words, raincoat-words,
splash- & spatter-words,
windshield-wiper-words, engine-stall-words,
no-landing-words, bilge-pump-words,
communicating-vessel-words –
until I lay the body aside
and stride through the dimensional portal
as the house lets itself be downspouted into tears,
and the gutters tell sloshy anecdotes
about ancient aqueducts to one another,
and a yellow warning for high flows
in northern rivers is issued,
and the roofs angle themselves cockily toward the skies
in nocturnal claims to space travel
Poetry by Ingvar Loco Nordin
Written on 2026-08-17 at 10:23
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