I come to think of it,
the cellar
under the kitchen;
that cold, damp space
into which you descend
along a steep, ladder-like stairway

My thoughts are sucked
into this almost unreal, dreamy amnesia
that stands silently introverted,
other-worldly
under the world
in another world,
below our common day, everyday feet,
stepping back and forth,
motioning our absentmindednesses
hither and thither
'tween stove and table, fridge and sink,
sunlight or moon ditto seeping in
through the windows,
the cat around our feet, tail raised,
begging for food,
the smell of fresh coffee
permeating our minds

While inhabitants have arrived
and departed up on the surface,
that periodically all but forgotten
quiet hollow
has remained the same
since it was dug out
in the 1930s,
mostly used as potato storage;
a cubic space about 8 ft x 8 x 8,
much like a tornado shelter
out in Oklahoma or Texas,
'cept hollowed out
under this farmhouse on a low moraine hill
in northernmost Sweden;
its entrance a hatch under the carpet
in the kitchen floor,
opening upwards and swung back
over the floor, allowing descent
into a dark chill
on a par with slipping into the hypnotic,
dreamy state of visions
between wakefulness and sleep

It passes unnoticed by visitors,
like murky family secrets

I've fantasized
'bout going into hibernation
down there,
hiding in its micro refuge
in a dark smell of soil and age,
silence and prehistory
and secrets,
but now I daydream
about squatting and crouching
in that cold darkness
with The Tibetan Book of the Dead,
a box of matches and a candle,
when the hot, white blast wave
of the Kremlin Spider's nuclear rage
flashes by
in the splintering annihilation
up above,
making everything even,

and the early Dylan song
Let Me Die In My Footsteps
starts circling my mind;
the poet's bitterly clearsighted comment
on the Kennedy – Khrushchev fallout shelter era
of the nuclear testing heydays,
when last there was a very real risk
of the world succumbing
in a storm of doomsday blasts