Anna wakes at quarter to five,
naked,
- except, perhaps, for a Back on Track
somewhere on her 64 years -
sneaks up,
putting on something light & thin,
which in the upper part closes
with a quick zipper rasp;
in my minute of half-awareness interpreted
as a promise of the constancy of safe repetition
and the day's fresh attempt at living,
before I sink back into continued sleep,
like a full-rigged East Indiaman lowering itself
into the observer's slow horizon,
while Anna assists with the eventual props of dreams
through small noises downstairs
and her steps creaking in the snow outside
during the morning horse routines,
followed by the departure
of the heavy Japanese four-wheel drive
towards the scaled-down physiotherapy work
at Sunderby Hospital,
or the sporadic teaching
of the physiotherapy students of the year
at Luleå University of Technology, 40 miles away,
as the night starts craving the title of dawn

When I wake a couple of hours later,
December darkness still tightly embraces
intentions and the memento mori
that – every morning – strokes my 74-year-old
horizontal plane with the fur,
while I stick my hands under the weight of the covers,
inside the merino longjohns,
feeling on either side of the warm physicality
I navigate, called Body,
to again confirm its expanse in hips & thighs;
to re-experience its warmth,
which is the tactile energy-language's translation
of metabolism and manageable ways of living,
as well as an apt reply to the planet's gravity,
until I let the entire machinery of movement creak to life
towards the white porcelain urine delivery
across the hall,
and the intake of 10 mg of Omeprazole
and a mouthful of water,
after which I, like an early commuter shuttle's back & forth
between Uppsala & Stockholm,
return to bed for a while,
maybe accompanied by Yi-Fu Tuan's Space & Place,
Conlin Heylin's The Double Life of Bob Dylan II
or Solvej Balle's Calculation of Volume, Vol. 2,
while a Cosmos of Reality and its lover Unreality
sing Existence, Materiality & Lack of Intent,
to my already excessive allowance,
in a Life & a World
where War & Genocide are the salt we sprinkle
in Humanity's Wounds,
millennium after millennium;
dismembered body parts fertilizing the expanses
of the Earth
in Hieronymus Bosch-detailed agonies;
the god nailed in Homo sapiens' heavy fantasies
about illogical forgiveness
in grotesque communion cannibalisms;
Hitler & Netanyahu blood brothers in Jerusalem & Khan Yunis