This is an airy planet

with space

under the stairs

(… and stars in space...)

I can sense it

when I tread back upstairs

barefoot

in the morning,

balancing my breakfast

for the habitual intake of nutrients

in bed,

back up against the pillows,

stacked against the wall,

perhaps with the morning news

on the radio,

old fashioned style,

a bit anachronistic I suppose

Thus I feel the space, under the stairs

that support my light treading,

under the stars

that (used to) give the seafarers their heading;

yes, there's space even in between my toes,

and around my thought, wherever it goes

in this suddenly soaring awareness

of the soaring salient roominess

that always gives free scope

for any kind of desperate succinct hope

& electricity;

somewhere for time to play

and myself to tread barefoot,

albeit disciplined

by the mysterious force

that bends light around stars

and draws magnificent worlds

into the anonymity of black holes,

though scientists now claim

that gravity ain't no force at all,

but rather a space-time situation

Life & the commonness of living

move like a medieval ballad

under my skin,

and to myself I mutter

the Ballad of Barbara Allen

- which I can't really pronounce in any way without weeping -
(”...Sweet William came from the West Country,

and he courted Barbara Allen...”)

as I sort of levitate

up the white semi-circle of the stairs

and the vertigo of the stars,

like the rose & the briar

that grew out of Barbara's & Sweet William's graves,

to become united at the top, in a lovers' knot,

while I'm balancing a bowl of oats, sunflower seeds,

pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, almonds,

raisins, dried apricots & lingonberry jam

in one hand,

and a cartoon of oat drink in the other

(since years replacing cow milk)

or stuck under my arm

to manoeuvre the world at large

with the free hand; freehand!

I've just had the day's premier conversation

with Gunwald the Cat,

and the next with myself, trying not to be too akward

and hard on myself

Anna had driven off the forty miles to her physiotherapist work

hours before I woke up

out of my dreams, and saw where I was

(moving back and forth,

every few months between farm and retreat

confuses an old man as to his whereabouts...),

but the dream I rose out of stayed on

in unusal clarity,

spent at the police station with some fellow investigators

that I'd left several years ago, retiring,

of whom I especially recall Göte Mattsson;

a Clark Gable-style crime investigator

who had retired decades before myself,

and whose hand I shook in our old corridor

The lightness with which I sprung up the stairs

to the position I now hold

with a wonderfully dancing Vega pen from Pilot,

opened a special planet

with ample room

for thought and surroundings

and the pure, tactile wonder of bare feet

up white wooden staircases

in a new cosmic morning,

as a pure metal Indonesian gamelan

in back of my mind, for some reason,

started to rhythmize my encounter with the world

as I lay down the pen (for now)

and let my life rest its wayward nature

on the surface tension of a sip of black coffee