F O T O, poems 81 - 90

Cirsium arvense (poem 88)

[Image source: http://www.flowersinsweden.com/Cirsiumarvense_page.htm]

81.  (Evening meal in the kitchen ― giggling)

“Men Mika...!”  The beer rushes over the table, fizzing happily,

plates clatter, Mum and me are convulsed with laughter,

“Dreadful child,” she says. I am seven years old,

the trees stir in their beds, soon we’ll sit down to canasta. 

82. (The four of us at the table)

You ran back. Smiles roamed, like smoke-rings,

our wrists resting on the table-edge, hands above plates.

The shutter snapped and cropped half your face.

The only sound on the film is the clock saying: Eight.    

83. (In the hammock at night)

On the black lawn your feet thump the ground, invisible.

I’m singing, a few strong features perch in the night:

the pale windowframes, a flagpole, pine branches...

we don’t need to shush: to the north, you can still see daylight.

84. (Morning sun through the trees)

From out of the endless woods a gift exhales:

not the first day, but another day.

That is best. To wake again knowing how good

it is to be woken. To know and not to say.

85. (Farms in the valley ― thistles in foreground)

After school Mats still RRrrmms his moped

up and down the home meadow. He might not go.

A tractor conjures hay-pills, glossy and white;

you have to work them, you don’t have the things you own.

86. (Dancing down road playing mouth-organ)

Dull gleam of blacktop ― landing hard, I scuffed it

and re-launched zigzag, no music but what's squeezed

from my hands and lips, nothing but my life

to mark the road and leave it used.

87. (Singing and walking)

I love you singing. Then all your unsigned beauty

which stands in frames around me, that gallery

compacts like a shock, and from your belly

you cry something deeper, your reality.

88. (Playing mouth-organ in thistles)

Noon: the greygreen globes bristle with mauve;

the bees come, thousands browsing, on every roadside

the sugar of summer grows tautly, walls of it

shimmer across the valley where a seed strayed.

89. (T-junction)

The roads have captions, but not the forest.

You reached across dusty metal, to touch RAGUNDA

20, like wording on a top. The leafy place is

its own tense home, it also may be a bender...

90. (Flowers in belt)

Those yellow/magenta empires broke up into stalky,

tangible structures. I picked samples, I was a student.

It made a bunch, nodding in the warmth of your loaded belt.

Between pineshadows you swung, solid and different.

*

Back-story: Utanede. 81-84 Evening and morning at the cottage. 85-90 Walk with Laura on the western side of the Indal river (road through sunny farmland from Västeråsen to Hölleforsen).