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, forty 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...