This morning early,
through my last moments of sleep,
I dreamt about my parents,
showing up in their fifties, I'd say,
lying back on a couch of some kind,
as I placed a new TV set in front of them,
with difficulty balancing it for them to watch
in an isolated sphere of time,
giving not a thought
to their longtime passing,
Dad in 1992 at 84, Mom in 2007 at 95

Now it's late the same day;
Anna's fast asleep beside me, as I lie on my back
reading Gaston Bachelard's
The Poetics of Space (1958),
my inscription from a few days ago
on an empty page inside the cover:

“Read twice
with many years in between,
this is another book,
I another being”

I wait at Morpheus' gate,
the Sandman tapping my shoulder
after a day with the horses
and the rest of 7th February devoted
to my late friend Guido Zeccola's long essay
or short book DAGNING (appr. Daybreak),
about love, an absent woman and Parmenides,
that I am reciting and editing
for a recording,
having worked hard with the author
back in the late 1990s
to get the language in good order,
since Guido had set for himself the complicated
and stubborn task
of writing his third book in Swedish
instead of his native Italian

As sleep is about to overtake me,
I hear earlier nights mumble around me
like the seven dwarfs around a sleeping Snow White,
while, on an extended and more distant scale,
I hear the crowds at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem
at the Tish'a B'av festival
as illustrated in Alvin Curran's “For Julian” (1990)
(Julian Beck from The Living Theatre in New York),
while even farther out around me
in space & time; just wind

I will soon lay my mastery of the moment down,
surrendering to the timelessness of the Cosmos
that sees me through dreams and visions
as well as the periods of deep sleep
in which I'll merge completely
with the Nothingness that dresses in stars,
losing my species kind and Homo sapiens individuality
to become pure wisdom,
tasting the raging peace of Hades or Nifelhel
until I rise again with Orpheus & Ra at dawn,
Non-Existence & Sleep in my eyes;
the Echoes of the Deep
leaving a sombre atmosphere
of Assurance & Unconcern,
while Anna will already be far off
down the wintry Northbothnian highway in a 4WD
to Sunderby Hospital by Luleå
and her physiotherapy job,
my body testing its muscles & tendons
and general options at our country home
under cover & quilt
for a little senior citizen while longer...