Anna's a liver of life,

actor of acts, doer of deeds, getter of getting things done,

always in the eye of any practical storm,

nails hammered, saws screeching,

horses running on longe lines

or galloping around the corral,

with Anna's well-centered power unquestioned, undisputed,

in the moment, precisely on the spot,

in place, on time

(Yes, life's vibrant and obvious in you,

around you)

She cares not for the keeping of books,

the filing of records, accounts, statements,

except when there's a judicial necessity requiring them,

when she instead is quite meticulous -

but she shows complete indifference to the eventual awareness

by her peers of herself and her life

She's well grounded in the life that streams in and out of her;

feet in the soil, mind focused,

will stronger than high-strength steel,

enforced with warmth and care

She's simply alive,

just there, now,

for the good of it,

making flowers and vegetables thrive,

fetching hay for the horses at Rolf's & Stig's

on the south side of the river,

making sure to buy the most nutritious food for Gunwald Cat,

whose slowly getting very old,

and refilling the bird feeders all year around;

not just in winter

She'd care less if her life passed on unnoticed

and left no traces but all her grandkids,

while I'm eager to take notes, file away poems,

day by day, thought by thought,

slide-showing slices of the elusive passage of time

through photography, sound recordings, training records

and hasty notes taken on the fly;

these fleeting fragrances of planetary existence,

cosmic unlikeliness,

nailed to crawling symbols in ink

across the off-white pages

of little black sketch books, 14 x 9 x 2 cm,

as I keep throwing the lasso of observations,

the net of incantations

over hours & days, seasons & years, decades & lives,

clear across this Bardo of events through the regions of Samsara,

not able to suffer the anonymity of the anonymous flow

of the anonymous me, the anonymous you,

under these stars with their allotted names

while you move about on the early morning farm

at 5 AM,

before hitting the motorway to work, forty miles away

I'm shivering at the edge of time,

while you're busy working the compost

or finishing the lofty gazebo in the garden,

built by you from scratch, freehand,

or exercising a horse,

perhaps painting a shed,

as I listen for the call of cranes in fall,

getting ready for their migration south

to Spain or Tunisia,

rising so high above lakes and forests,

that you hardly make their thin plough out,

moving across the sky,

albeit still hearing their high-pitched grating

resounding across the land of the living and the newly dead,

you calling to me

down from the horses' meadow, clearing dung:

”Can you hear the cranes?”,

I yelling: ”Yes! Yes!”