Three Chocolate Balls at Lill-Strycken
Yesterday,
after the mini book fair in Råneå,
where I’d improvised emergency rhymes on the spot
and listened to the Lavskriket Poetry Collective,
I sat there, sweat-soaked
and heavy as the whole planet,
left alone on the ground
in the birchwood hollow at Lill-Strycken,
so idiotically empty of carbohydrates
that life went into emergency mode
& a state of exception;
the whole body into command-post mode,
at the very bottom of gravity,
with my raincoat underneath me
and a green military-poetry shirt over me
as protection against the raindrops from the trees,
unable to carry my own weight,
like an astronaut just returned to Earth
from the International Space Station
on the desert steppe outside Baikonur,
while Anna hurried
out of the waterlogged forest, across the meadow,
to the car,
to hunt for emergency rations for the fallen one who was me,
brutally decarbohydraulicked,
practically a hydraulic,
with consciousness running on empty
down among the autumn leaves,
among the spiders in the undergrowth,
with the Råne River passing
in full rainy-season belligerence at Lill-Strycken
a little way from me,
in a body that trembled,
when I, struck to the ground,
managed to get my fly open
and was forced to pass my water
lying on my back beneath the birches,
only just avoiding
wetting my trousers –
but three little chocolate balls from the car
& a few solitary blueberries,
sparsely gathered,
woke me at once,
quick as quick & in the blink of an eye,
to life & customary hubris;
raised me from the dead,
resurrected the decimated,
the severely reduced,
to the role of strongman;
an elder with nimble legs, inexhaustible energy
& a twinkle in his eye;
the stretch back to the car a breeze & a game,
once metabolism had quick-metabolized,
& restored my invincibility!
Poetry by Ingvar Loco Nordin
Read 12 times
Written on 2026-08-30 at 11:09
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Clara Mae Gregory |
