Dawn emerges across the mountains,
through the forests, across rivers and fields,
down the circuits of Pompeii & St. Louis,
Niemisel & Crewkerne

The circadian adjustments rise
in blood & hormones
as I am slowly made aware,
fragments of dreams dissolving
like the faint scent
of a passing woman's perfume
on a smalltown pavement
as a mighty world occupies my face
with face value,
that I must take it at

All stubbornness of lost faces
asks to be taken at face value:
Sirkka, Dellaree, Judy,
as does the numbness of the forlorn faces
of Sune, Sture, Syssling

The situations in Kiev, in Baalbek & Kathmandu,
in Nok Kundi & Mesquite;
all encompassed in their tactile face value
of this moment, this world,
the words of diaries fluttering up
like Inger Christensen's butterflies
through the hot midday air of the Braj?ino Valley,
at face value

All necessary deeds, all unnecessary,
plus all deeds left undone;
part of the obnoxious face value
of each & every every & each,
down the halls of institutions,
up the calls of the Wild,
through the merciless power
of photosynthesis & holy gravity;
with all imagined deities
and the black coffee
that smirks down the cylinders
of office mugs
all across habitation,
at the same forceful Face Value

- not forgetting the fiscal face value,
the forensic face value,
the fidgety face value,
the full scale face value
or the face value face value

Face Value rises out of the world
like mind out of anaesthesia