A change of season,
for an old person,
is heavy, slow work

This morning I take a piece of chocolate
with the coffee,
just to work up the strength
to be able to investigate
the slow motion of this task

I'm by myself upstairs,
lagging behind time & its consequences,
while Gunwald the cat sleeps in an armchair
downstairs at the very edge of his prolonged existence,
and Anna, the safe haven of this unruly soul,
is on her 4WD way down the motorway, sixty miles off,
to her physiotherapist employment,
though she too, albeit not in the manner of me,
experiences age enough to cut down on work hours,
but, ten years after, she doesn't yet think of seasons
the way I do

It's the 29th of February,
an unlikely place in itself,
sort of a questioned statement in time,
or like a comet that returns every four years,
tall tailing across the hemisphere;
a date well suited a circumstance of doubt,
needed to pin down the hard times of seasonal change,
without stirring the cosmic order too much,
in the secrecy of this strange time capsule,
without risking being discovered
and pinned down
as an undesired anchor of the passing hour

When I was a kid,
I moved swiftly as a scout for new seasons

Depending on where I was 'round the year,
I'd hike woods & meadows
where patches of snow still shone,
searching for the first glances
down amongst yesteryears' brown leaves
of the blue-eyed Anemone hepatica,
or a little later the armies
of strong-headed Anemone nemorosa,
imitating the snow in their white collars,
and late in the autumn I would hop through the forest
in rubber boots onto which the leaves would stick,
hoping for the first flakes of snow to sail down
in scant silence, touching my cheeks,
refreshing my mind

Oh, it's a different story now, at 75 & counting,
when I've worked so hard to adapt
to 100 cm of snow neath my skis,
which I've also come to love so much,
but with an unchanging force & habit,
that I've made mine, becoming a Yeti
of sorts up here in Northbothnia,
expecting – emotionally - nothing else at the end of days,
temperatures slumping below law & order,
me slipping into my sleepingbag
in the Great Ship of Dreams
but now,
after my intense oldboy work of a Snowman;
- a heroic feat for an aged poet on the brink
of Nothingness -
I can smell the illicit odor of spring in the air,
and hear the first bird song expressions
of the little ones who've flocked to the feeders
outside the kitchen windows all winter,
while I glance at the skis
leaning against the porch walls,
knowing I'll for sure be on them
a couple of months still,
but having to look out for waining ice
on the lakes,
and perhaps needing to apply “warm” weather ski wax,
and – which is the serious stuff – having to prepare
for SOMETHING ELSE, something entirely different,
which I intellectually knew was coming,
but that I, in a strange, dreamy, psychotic way
still hardly believed in, since winter was so convincing;
winter, that I learned so well!

At this age, and under the thumb of such heroic adjustments,
seasonal change doesn't anymore feel like the start of something,
but rather the end of something...

This could be the end of something!!!

I know I'll be on my bikes as soon as possible,
and that I'll feel the same for autumn
as I feel now for a spring that waits behind the trees,
but still, I anchor myself in the present season
as a Buddhist in a present body,
and only reluctantly accept the next in line
of the planetary swing; the rebirth,
having the senior's difficulty with every oncoming Bardo!

So I watch Winter take off it's white coat
and go drowning in the lake,
where the ice is getting awfully thin...