The people, determined

or surrendered to themselves,

float along in human form,

with emotions swelling or weathered,

smoked asunder

diagonally across the town square

I look like who I am,

at the outdoor café,

with necessary reservations

The sun speaks plainly over the cobblestones,

my gaze immersed in coffee black,

while the caffein gilds the scattered idleness

of the town square café

with these letters

and the shrill twelve noon bell strokes

of the Nicolai Church carillon

on the fifteenth of May;

one false hour from the reality of the solar system;

a peculiar pull in humanity,

which no one acknowledges

The bassline from a car in the distance

marks a heavy rhythm,

like a hidden heart in the town hall,

Åke Hodell style

The carillon in the church tower plays a familiar melody,

which, despite its modernity, feels medieval,

in a session at the intersection of ancient imagination

and wind in the hair

Two beautiful ladies meet in an embrace

in front of my notes,

right between birth & death, presumably,

unless something unexpected...

At any moment, a Dylan song passes,

preferably from Blonde on Blonde,

when suddenly a thin drizzle dissolves the ink

on the paper

I lift the tray, return inside,

listening to the societal hum of the ventilation

and voices out in the foyer

A jackdaw flies by,

forgetful of its dinosaur background

Another jackdaw (or the same?) flies up

onto the Town Hall's gutter

with a morsel in its beak;

reaching some kind of lingering truth

within these notes

The sun regains dominance

I look out over the square,

distractedly mulling over my death thoughts

Gloom is sand in the pockets, dirt under nails,

itchiness in the scalp

But I know the coastline out there lies bathing

in wind and glitter

and the piercing cries of terns

The walk home through the kilometers

insists in my body

I see people at the café; their moments expanding

like the calm before the storm, like oil spills on the sea,

unintentional, without cause, held open

Life is a kind of virtual reality

I walk homeward in a playback of some kind of time,

I know that, in a sort of memory of the present

and its borderlands

[An interpretation of poem no. 9 of my collection Bona Fide)