Left eye runny, today's house a pause in a pause on a hill,

yesterday's ophthalmologist backing off into vagueness,

explaining that his lady was accepted for an education

up here,

which is why they both split from Ystad town

in the very south, to this northern challenge,

four years ago,

he biking to and from the hospital each workday,

16 km x 2,

I commending him on that,

before tripping down the staircase, six floors,

eye as runny as ever

Today the dictionary opens

at the precise page 1178 out of 1626;

the word investigated the first word on that page,

in the uppermost left corner on the left page,

staring me in the runny eye

Given the natural notion, after a flipping-pages life,

of the approximate position of the letter R

in any dictionary,

this still comes on synchronistically,

as an unlikely, unexplained hit on the head of the nail,

after which even that expression, when checked,

- to add to the 26th of September enigma -

shows up on first flip of pages, on page 892

Meanwhile,

the birch wood toothpicks on the bedside table,

thrown about like I Ching sticks,

make placing the coffee mug uneasy

Day ongoing, barely half of it undone;

the world coming to a start,

my pauses taken on as expeditions now, at 75,

Lucien Stryk's voice

in the back of my mind; Chinese Death Poems

in that sincere, lazy, hypnotic voice;

the Pauses North, Pauses South

- and aren't we all pauses, crossing paths?

The kittens are gaining weight and mystique

A beautiful Pyrrhula pyrrhula slams

into the bedroom window

and drops dead out on the balcony,

promptly, expediently,

in the midst of these grasshoppy letters,

at the moment when coffee mug 1

was about to be replaced by coffee mug 2,

- actually coffee mug one refilled -

my Homo sapiens guise barefooting down and up

the curving, white wooden staircase,

when the little recess in the bigger recess

was changing mindset

- and aren't we all recesses in recesses in recesses?