Saturday, September 26, 2015

Least obvious corner


To be found in one of the least obvious corners of such a landscape
A discrete fold in space just like the back of a sofa
Whatever is behind it is inevitable
The scaly skin of a scattered herring
Raised like the wing of a grand piano
A piano being peeled like an orange
There can be nothing at the back of a sofa
Emerging spots of bare rock
This is surely the best picnic spot
Maybe it was just the screech of an owl
These are not sharp pine needles
These are not fire ants
These are not threatful dogs lurking
These are not the usual quarrels surfacing
This is maybe an island from another world
And again it is difficult to tell where the horizon is
Are those clouds or is it a threatening wall of standing water, like a frozen tidal wave, or is it just the sea in the distance and we are all slightly tilted?
We can easily make up new archipelagoes
It’s not the worst part of the job
We can even sit down and relax feeding the exotic ducks
Our hands are not bloody and the fishing nets are clean
These are friendly carpenter ants
These are the soft needles of a larch
These are splendid martens watching from the edge of the forest
These are lions and tigers and bears
Vast church organs vast fishing nets vast muddy riverplains
But the compasses we managed to bring through don’t work out here
Maybe it’s just packed dirt preventing the needle from moving
There might be other hands of the clock waiting to emerge
But painfully as it rips our flesh on its way out
Like a spring from the sofa
Geometry tilts again
This is surely the best picnic spot
Especially now that it’s so dark

Sep 26th, M Forshage