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...