F O T O, poems 91 - 100

Moon over a distant Indalsälven

[Image source: https://plus.google.com/s/Indals%C3%A4lven/posts . Photo by Anders Lundh.]

91. (Indal ― where we swam)

Trees on a promontory. Around us the great river

massed, penned in by the great dam.

Someone lit a fire here once. We talked quietly

(it was afternoon), ate crisps, prepared to swim.

92. (In the river)

I am in the middle of Indalsälven, and the world.

The huge embrace of water is not clammy, it is complete.

I trod against the suck damwards...  or else I ransacked

the still, big surface; with joy in escaping and in doing it.

   

93. (Smiling in shadow of the bank)

A double dragonfly crackled in the reeds.

Chest-deep, my toes nibbled at the sloppy stones,

my mind still swimming. How soon to swim back into the light,

and be only my limbs again, local in the horizons!

94. (It’s freezing!)

The breath that ought to be in you is all

flown to the four winds, and you can’t get it back,

climbing in panic water and earning in gasps

a pinch of noise to tell me ― it needs a shriek.

95. (Sitting in the river ― horse-fly)

Wet skin looks untouchable, unscented:

the broms-noise stopped. Ouch, you joined the foodchain!

Rueful and laughing, that the broms slapped down so instantly

and got you. You snapped your towel, complaining. 

96. (Reflecting trees and sky)

Dammed up, the river spreads. On its surface

my vision flew back, reversed and crossed with ripples,

the aspens stepping down upon their tops,

the skyline cracked, the sky charged with the invisible.

97. (Flower-wreath on my head)

I am a fool, but picked flowers were always a crown

for tables or for hair. Passed from hand to hand, too.

That was the start of culture, but not those immortal monuments

we have tasted since. Just now, for me and you.  

98. (Playing mouth-organ in hammock)

Why should you, up there in denser and softer darkness,

mother me, bow to me, you childhood trees?

I’ll die with you, I promise. Those who can live with it,

those survivors, may they keep fit on our ashes!

99. (Swinging in hammock)

Adrift... adrift... big bird crisscrossing the moon you seem

a fixture, like the slow grey liverwort on the rock

where I sketched it yesterday. After packing, you slipped out to seem.

But soon, we’ll matter less than your lost sock.

100. (Sunset behind trees)

The sky rustled, smeared by the wind.

In our absence small yellow leaves would spiral;

the train sped through forests, a directory of trees.

We crouched on our bags, amusing a tearful child.

*

Back-story: Poems 91-97 The walk pauses for a swim in the Indal, just above the dam at Hölleforsen. 98-99 Final evening at the cottage. 100 Departure: the train south (from Sundsvall towards Stockholm).

Poem 98 refers to a poem by Edith Södergran.

When this sequence was written (1998-2002), each poem was linked to one of the 100 photos in a holiday album. Originally, I intended to write the poems into the album itself, like captions. But as time went by the poems became a public art and when I presented them I replaced the photos with brief explanatory titles in brackets. The missing photos, I hoped, would operate as a concealed presence whose form the reader can discern sometimes distinctly, sometimes more faintly.

The images accompanying these 2016 blog posts are unrelated to the original photos: they are taken from current internet sources.


FULL LINKS TO ALL OF FOTO :

Poems 1 - 10
http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/f-o-t-o-poems-1-10.html

Poems 11 - 20
http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/f-o-t-o-poems-11-20.html

Poems 21 - 30
http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/f-o-t-o-21-30.html

Poems 31 - 40
http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/f-o-t-o-poems-31-40.html

Poems 41 - 50
http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/f-o-t-o-poems-41-50.html

Poems 51 - 60
http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/f-o-t-o-poems-51-60.html

Poems 61 - 70
http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/f-o-t-o-poems-61-70.html

Poems 71 - 80
http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/f-o-t-o-poems-71-80.html

Poems 81 - 90
http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/f-o-t-o-poems-81-90.html

Poems 91 - 100
http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/f-o-t-o-poems-91-100.html

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). 

F O T O, poems 71 - 80

The hole at Döda Fallet (poem 75)

[Image source: https://cykelsparet.wordpress.com/sidospar/doda-fallet/]

71. (Writing in Sveja café)

Rain blew us in here, among almond cakes sheened

with icing: the commonest things! postcards, souvenirs,

the stillness ― nailclippers glinted yellow and blue.

The tea chinked. Outside, prowling, the rain continues.

72. (Spinning wheel at Sveja café)

Slowly this spinning stopped. It went with its people

who one by one lay down in hospitals and stopped.

No spinning for me!  No mild face, no clasp or hat,

no share in any of the homespun things they hoped.

73.  (Red moss in the forest)

By the way-side, the wanderer’s pillow:

prod, and a cool damp rises. I tried to forget it,

but my fingers don’t forget: for many years

they have begged to sleep in the free forest.  

74. (Döda Fallet ― the Dead Fall)

A sculling water stood, sucked into a braid between trees

and boiling, twisting, exploding in the past,

that hollow place. Bare stones, and the smell of coffee.

A bee hums flatly, crossing the same river twice.

75. (Looking through a hole in the rock ― Döda Fallet)

The river’s whorls left the stone drilled and in two places

ventilated with our day. You up there, me below.

We shouted so each could hear the space around.

I’m not a mirror or a telly, I am the one you know.

76. (Setting off ― hat on back)

Raindrops kindled on an aspen-leaf; unrolling over fields

the sun sharpened each edge of trees with newer light.

Maybe they look now as they really are, living in stillness.

With us it’s different, we launched wheeling on menstrual routes.

77. (Laura writing ― Holmstagården)

You shield this, not to keep secret for always,

but to present mocking and hear with delight.

You dress up a whole stretch of yourself at once,

to slay me beside the pines in the sunlight. 

78. (Dad and me by bonfire)

The smoke rose far off, I hurried to come and stand by you.

Then we regard the flames and share the distance

you couldn’t help imposing, when I was born. In the midst

of youth I was there: you made me, yet it felt like chance.

79. (Bonfire ­― smoke and sun)

Leafy boughs crackle, turn red and evanesce.

Thick smoke chivvies us sideways. The sly-heap dwindles.

Twenty-five summers of burning, to make out this garden

a nature with paths, a hymn of sky and details.

80.  (Laura raking bonfire)

Then we scrape it back, hush it into a calm oval

like a sleeping breast, a shallow mound.

The trees breathe again their damp gaseous food.

After dark, it glows softly and pink, warm all round.

*

Back-story. Walks and cottage chores around Utanede in E. Jämtland.

71-72 A cafe that operated for a few years at the south end of the village.
74-75 The famous "Dead Falls", the exposed river-bed at the former site of Storforsen, now a tourist attraction a few miles further up the Indal valley. I gave a brief account of what happened here: http://michaelpeverett.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/flowers-from-jamtland-july-2013.html
78-80 Bonfires are only permitted during, or soon after, rain.
79. "Sly". Local word for straggly young trees and bushes, which grew very rapidly and had to be cleared from the garden every year.

F O T O, poems 61 - 70

Northern Crowberry (Empetrum hermaphroditum), photo by Anna-Lena Anderberg 

[Image source: http://linnaeus.nrm.se/flora/di/erica/empet/empeher.html]

61. (Washing clothes in the garden)

Plain flowers, children, their tiny tops,

tenderly handled, long gone, long grown out of.

Under a foreign sky, wringing your socks.

For each past, we still carry the useless love.

62. (On the bron ― Mum arranging flowers)

You spared a posy and naturally it’s obstinate;

the stems huddle, all the worse for the breeze.

Untidy! Your fingers dab, you’d like to plait it.

And then the shape settles ― just right ― in your eyes.

63. (Laura and me ― Holmstagården)

Only us. We switched tables with the sun, and finally

camped out in the café lawn, in bowls of clover.

Sitting still, we pivot. The sweeping pine sweeps in reverse.

And now, the building is watching us over its shoulder. 

64. (Campfire ― Norrsjön)

In the flurrying smoke clutching your sandwich:

the smile of the lucky one. The flame’s soft ditty

sings like it never stopped singing five years ago,

and you were one of my sisters, minding eternity.

65. (Picnic beneath the pines)

Dad has a dozen casts, and lands a jack-pike.

My concentration broke, but the hundred trees

never miss a single detail. The lake’s latest instalment

narrates all summer. And then? Well, everything freezes...

66. (Drinking tea)

The patchy pine-spires, their sifted lights,

their rationed rain on crowberries, rocks, bilberries —­

for ever. Eclipsed by a totem, bristly pig-face:

all in scented reflection, I tipped it into me.

67.  (Rowing ― Norrsjön)

Over the blind transom you lolled your fingers...

Far off, a diver honks — us, too! The dinghy bends

and shies, ruffled by waves. They are coursing coldly

under the deck, those songs without friends.

68.  (Sleeve over mouth)

“Have I gone too far at last?” your eyes watched me,

spoilt and shining. You have completely overhauled

the fizzing ant-hill and the sunstriped lake, this isn’t the walk

I thought I’d take. It was nature: but this is wild. 

69. (Moss-hall)

Within the shadows sometimes are quiet halls, bright green

and foodless to go to. Here moss riots, immobile.

A yellow leaf has drifted here, presented on a cushion.

A beach, a church. To scuffle and shriek in the aisle.

70. (Kvarnån in spate)

From out of the woods, Kvarnån aired a crush

of yellow histories; they winked, plunged under the bridge.

And beyond, it steadies, it becomes a brilliant sash. 

They built there: hard, flat rooms; the hum of a fridge...

*

Back-story: In and around Utanede. 61-62: Cottage chores. 63: Local cafe. 64-67: a local lake (on the forested plateau to the east of the Indal valley). 68-69. Walking back from the lake. 70. Local beck in spate after more rain. 

F O T O, poems 51 - 60

Martingården, at Nybyn, Överkalix

[Image source: https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Tourism-g800223-Overkalix_Norrbotten_County-Vacations.html]


51. (Sparkstötting, cartwheels, anchor ― Överkalix)

The last generation of the old kit

is lovely decaying among the flowers.

Peasant — aristocrat. Against much logic

the trace of your famished life fed my eyes. 

52. (In the cafe/junkshop, Överkalix ― for Rachel)

Drawers striped with dust, old annuals, kettles, handles;

a tea-mist forms, but you’d brighten it Rachel,

you who quarry the auction browns with warm eyes,

no sentiment of loss. Everything’s up for renewal.

53. (On the drive south)

The stitches out, 600 miles of rain, our last wee-halt

in the woods that smell of humus, then Utanede by midnight.

Back seat dark, still warm. Dad’s hand on the wheel,

plump with bandages, roosts... no. ― is bright and alert.

54. (Brushing my teeth in the garden)

Dawn sat in the ghost-farm; perhaps took coffee...   

Shadows have pates now: flowers inch open.

An insect whirrs at the grille. Peeking out,

the aspen is glittering. I stumbled into the sun.

55. (Mum in the hammock)

For two minutes and a photograph

you put your feet up. Green morning sunshine.

For eight seconds you gazed across the valley,

swaying between a birch and pine, wishing nothing.

56. (Långfil)

Corner snipped, the carton pumped in my hand,

& the fil flopped into itself in the bowl.

So lovely and white, my spoon hovered,

a bather on the brink. Then I dogged it all.

57. (Dad chopping kindling)

You’ve thought of it all week, the treacherous block

where the axe clanged and split your hand.

Now you have to go back. To do what you dreamt, in shock,

in the muddle of blood: be calm and it’s gone, you rewind...

58. (Sickling the garden)

The hip-high grass, the wineglass bellflowers

toppled, strewn hither and thither. A rake rasps

bouncing on the cellar slopes. They drank their saft  

and swished, from the rust-red walls, stray wisps...

59. (Eyes closed in hammock)

The sun lurches, and the ground tilts, the red cottage;

you shove off, and go sleeping on the wing.

Under your eyelids, the day broadens.

Deep in your shadows, how loud the birds sing! 

60. (Sawing logs)

Chock. I wiped the saw with a clout of grass,

its hot teeth resiny. Racked in the shed, all mine:

so long may I read and dance, so many winter days! 

(But their records go on playing: sap, sweat, rain...)

*

Back-story. 51-53. The road trip ends, with a day of driving through steady rain. Brief stop for coffee and a loppis at Överkalix in Norrbotten.

53, 57. While L. and I were cycling round Abisko (37 - 50), my dad was at a hospital in Kiruna having the stitches taken out of his hand, following a recent accident with an axe.

54. Waking up in the morning at the summer cottage in Utanede, last seen in Poem 2. This is the locale for the rest of the sequence. Fine weather suddenly, after a very wet summer. Time for the outdoor chores (57, 58, 60).

54. The ghost-farm. An abandoned building on the fringe of the village, hence higher up the slope of the river valley and catching the morning sun earlier. The rural villages of Jämtland (like rural areas elsewhere) are reduced in population; empty buildings are commonplace.

56. Långfil. A regional variety of fermented milk with added butterwort, which gives it a ropy texture (hence "long fil").

F O T O, poems 41-50

Lapporten

[Image source: http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Europe/Sweden/Norrland/Lappland/Abisko/photo906406.htm]

40.  (Cold water ― Torneträsk)

Sea ― big enough ― no access though,

I mean for salt, and cruise ships.

Sweet scent of this: birch, bog myrtle...

Sea fed by snow-melt. Hundred cold taps.

41.  (Flinging water)

Oh no. Not now your hands have found the water.

I know you’re a damned dangerous woman.

“Our matrons were lovely. They had to be, or they’d have been hounded out.”

And even so, you shook talc in matron’s bun.

43. (Shirt off by the fall)

Unmuted, my skin rubs up against the world:

coarse prickles of treeish debris;

swirls in the air; warm, flat butt of stone;

splish ― two, three drops crawl on my belly.

44. (Kicking water)

I looked at the dreamy arc and wished, somehow,

it would hang up there but it can't. From the moment

it flares up huge it is failing and kick as I may

it is falling into the gliding beck, no comment.

45. (Mad picture of Laura eating pancake)

Kerstin fluffed up a broad bowl of cream

and they were ready, they opened the servery.

We slogged up the hill with bikes. On time

we delivered our savagery.

46. (Laura dancing, Lapporten behind)

You create round a space in the hills and

fill it forever with something that isn't there.

My ever, at least. Something I’ll gaze at, old

and back, oh what is it? But you signed the air. 

47. (Hands to the sky)

Thus the plants lift their leaves, but we can't

snack from the sky. All the same, we're quicker.

Your arms make a yearning gesture, your palms

open. You discover America.

48. (Yelling in the hills)

T I L L ! Even the greatest bomb dies into silence…

Y O U ! How briskly she folds down the blankets on uproar

F I N D ! and back slips peace; but crush it baby

Y O U R !! and sing out – show we’ve more.

49. (Rented bikes)

Weird brakes ― you back-pedalled whinnying;

& angel handlebars, I slewed all

over the road groping for gears at knee-level. One plus-point:

springing, across the blue birchscape, the radiant bells.

50. (Writing in turiststation, rainstorm outside)

As if I hadn’t seen, dull as a stone

or that bench outside the window…

Decapitated mountain, grey fizzbomb.

Tea, trying to write a card. Glad to be indoors.

*

Backstory: All poems located on the same mostly sunny day at Abisko in the far north of Sweden. The U-shaped valley "Lapporten" (46 and image), to the east of Abisko,  is one of Sweden's most recognizable skylines.

F O T O, poems 31 - 40

Abisko: view of Torneträsk

[Image source: http://www.hikeventures.com/Best-places-to-visit-in-scandinavia-hiking-backpacking-packrafting/]

31.   (Me sitting in long grass by the fjord)

It was incredible that grass should grow

and pine-trees drop fat needles on the path,

oyster-catcher run rings around us squawking,

and evening boats bob calmly, this far north.

32.   (Fjord)

Starved beauty of borderland, beach, road,

caravan lots, sat still on the rough, cool grass

when evening broods, and closes like an eye.

In a snap making the ending endless.  

33.   (View of mountains)

Each morning I live in the face of untravelled lands

but I can’t come now. Knee-deep in bilberries and fern-fronds

high up above the highway and the bay, I’m busy but

each night I sleep in the grip of untravelled lands.

34.  (Rallarrosen ― “the navvy’s rose”)

No trace now of the anxious, sprawling camps,

no clanking barrows, no chinking hammer, no men.

Empty land, but alive. The unsweet roses

threw a blast of silent plumes after the train.

35.  (Birch woods ― Riksgränsen)

We called through the open door. Yes, it was a café,

and yes, she could do us coffee, though nothing to eat.

She balanced the tray slowly across the granite ground

to the only table. And after all it had a few cakes on it. 

36.   (Abisko turiststation)

The deerherds pitched on the high pass. At midnight

smoke whispered from their huts, on the postcard.

In the “Playstation” we showered and queued for dinner. 

Mum said: “kåtor” and Dad said: “goahte”.

37.   (The ground ― with Saxifraga aizoides)

We dashed our bikes on the ground,

the wheels still spinning. The day had begun.

Red, yellow, orange glowed the streamlets.

Through space flew my greedily sucking lungs.

38.   (Slate rockface with orange lichen)

The boreal zone, which is dominated by conifers;

and the arctic zone, which is dominated by lichen.

This is the arctic. What you see doesn’t really exist,

unless it’s portable — which this isn’t.

39.   (The waterfall)

Water plunges all together

and comes up sparkling

and unharmed. It’s idiotic but

no wonder it’s laughing.

40.  (Laura above the waterfall, kicking feet in the air)

In the airy wink of your calves

lives the pedalling of small, soapy feet.

Your own, and your children’s. “Maybe soon

I’ll be a grandmother. Oh, I can’t wait!”

*

Back-story. Poems 31-32 are at Skibotn (Norway), as night (but not darkness) falls. Next morning (33) our road-trip turned south, crossing back into Sweden at Riksgränsen, where the road runs alongside the railway that was built to export Swedish steel to the west via the Norwegian port of Narvik (34, 35). Poems 36-40 take place at Abisko where we stayed two nights. Abisko Turiststation, beside lake Torneträsk in the far north of Sweden, is located in the notable rain-shadow cast by the Kebnekajse massif; we had (mostly) brilliant weather, while the rest of Norrland lay under incessant rain. 

Poem 36, last line. These are the Swedish and Same words, respectively, for the tepee-like huts used as temporary habitations by travelling Same.