A cold gray rain hammers on the roofs

as I walk across the farmyard

on the last of July,

dressed in a mid-length yellow raincoat,

a cap from Billerud Korsnäs,

and work pants from ITAB pulled up tight

and well-belted, with the big boots from Tretorn, ready

for mucking out the shelter,

while the horses Moses, Torre & Russin

graze in a distant pasture, beyond the farm buildings,

saved from mosquitoes, gnats & horseflies by the rain

I carefully avoid causing the sound of metal

against metal,

which is otherwise hard to avoid

when opening the steel gate between the farmyard

and the horses' pastures,

and which would lure the horses into a trot

up around the farm, to the shelter,

hoping for extra hay,

or even entry into their stable stalls.

Now they don't hear me,

but graze together

with their noses in the grass,

calm and serene in the rain.

Inside the safe dimness of the shelter

I pause

with the wheelbarrow's handles still

in my rain-wet hands;

the pitchfork leaning back in the barrow,

the fairy-tale atmosphere thick around my cognition

in the bunker-like space

that Anna and I set up

as an open extension of the stable building

in 2015,

just when I arrived after a two-week cycling trip

from Sörmland to Anna's farm in Norrbotten

Peace sits heavily inside, with arms crossed,

like the gathered sheltering of thousands of years

in the semi-darkness,

the two openings curtained with heavy fabrics,

that the horses,

and I with the wheelbarrow, easily pass through.

I stand still

and feel the almost timeless joy

of sheltering from the cold clatter of the rain

on the roof,

as the swallow parent at the nest

up on one of the beams in a corner,

gets anxious from my odd stillness in the shelter,

and starts circling around in the hall, under the roof,

chirping lively

The fledglings have flown for quite a while,

but all still seek shelter in the dimness

from rain and rough weather,

and when I focus my gaze in the shadows

I see a couple of heads poking up

from the otherwise abandoned swallow's nest

I wake from my rain-heavy morning meditation,

reluctantly,

and start mucking out

Then I no longer pose a threat,

and the swallow parent,

who for a while, chirping lively,

flew in and out through the opening

that Anna sawed at the top of the wall,

calms down,

and the birds remain in the hall's cozy shelter

from the forces that roar & rumble

over the shelter roof,

splashes from ancient gutters;

and gushes from vertical downspouts

The day does its part,

dressed in a sou'wester

as July washes itself

into August's magical moonlit nights,

teeming with haiku and puzzling zen koans