Smultronställe

Lyrics

There's a scent... not just pine.
Damp earth after a brief sun shower.
That's the key that turns the lock.

I remember leaving the main trail.
No reason, just a pull from somewhere else.
The ground went soft with last year's needles.
A cuckoo called, twice, from a world away.
And the air grew warm in a small clearing, a glänta, you would call it.
Sunlight falling through the birch leaves like dust.

A place with no address.
A map coordinate for the heart.
You have a word for it.
Smultronställe.
Not just the wild strawberry patch.
It’s the quiet that finds you there.
The peace that asks for nothing back.

I knelt.
My knees sinking into the cool moss.
The tiny tin pail, a sound like a small bell against a stone.
Fragaria vesca, so small, so fiercely red.
Each one a secret held under a green leaf.
Mid-June sun, stretching the day until it almost broke.
My thumb, stained with a sweet, warm red that wouldn't wash away for days.

A place with no address.
A map coordinate for the heart.
You have a word for it.
Smultronställe.
Not just the wild strawberry patch.
It’s the quiet that finds you there.
The peace that asks for nothing back.

Bergman knew.
It's not the place you go back to with your feet.
It's the memory that comes back to you.
The taste that finds you on a crowded city street.
A small, wild sweetness when the world is only salt and noise.
A private country.
My only flag is a red-stained thumbprint.

Still on my tongue.
That secret red.
Smultronställe...