A Memory From the Eighties

I remember awakening among the clouds

on the top of a Norwegian fell,

moss and lichen and rocks

all else erased by the clouds

and behind me a tent, in

sleeping bags my family,

my whole world that circle

of thirty meters of silence I could see.

Below, the fjords, the blue sea,

somewhere behind the NATO base

we had driven past - No Stopping -

and the nuclear war fears

the time harboured, the fear

of sirens, of a message in the radio,

the cloud. The end, silent.

What hour was it? I didn't

know. Deep northern summer,

the endless light, seeping

through the clouds; timeless

moment, timeless

existence, and

behind, in the tent

my whole world.

25.03.2017