Bio
Anglo-Danish by birth but Bahamian by upbringing, Robin HelwegLarsen has been published in the Alabama Literary Review, Allegro, Ambit, Amsterdam Quarterly, Shot Glass Journal and other international journals. He is Series Editor for Sampson Low's 'Potcake Chapbooks - Form in Formless Times', and blogs at formalverse.com from his hometown of Governor's Harbour.
Robin Helweg-Larsen
On Doing Nothing
Here where the royal poinciana's blaze
pales to haze in the full midday craze
of light on shallows stiller than you can see
and all time stops, worn out from timeless sun
in a land and season where nothing's to be done,
futility stretching to eternity,
and nothing is, except for heat and light...
accept the heat and light, the dazzling green and blue,
do nothing: for there's nothing here to do.
Although elsewhere the world's a ruin of smoke—
democracy and leadership a joke—
I unapologetically sit out the war
(whether on virus, climate change, or rich v. poor),
I'm Swede or Swiss to their corrupted plight.
A fish, a coconut—I don't need more.
And so I sit and think, and read, and write.