caught between the planes and the graves… jets screaming overhead, graves dreaming underfoot… here we go again, another day of war and death, cause and effect… consequences… some days are so busy there’s a roaring aerial bombardment of sound every 15, 10, five minutes, other days are as quiet as… a grave… we all know we all die, one day, inevitably, in the end, we know this in our heads but yet not one of us thinks it will happen to us… the world can’t really exist without us as what we perceive is the world so if we weren’t here then there’s nothing to perceive… of course we are all perceivers, great perceivers, some more perceivery than others and ever so many perceivereft, bereft of anything close to being perceptive and wade through their days in a meaningless haze… of course we know we aren’t immortal but still, it won’t happen to us, for me not me, for you not you, but for me you will and for you I will and regardless of this we both collude in a grand illusion not saying a word to anyone lest we break the spell and vanish in a puff of sophistry…. this may all sound specious but that’s delusion for you and contradiction, every day is littered with them, one hand contradicting the other refusing to believe a word, or a finger, that is says, or pokes…… planes and graves, some days dominated equally by both although the graves are always there, next door, being graves, not expecting anything… one thing they do lack, luckily, are onlookers, people taking photographs, unlike the planes where people line the airfields boundaries, enthusiasts (or spies, who knows) watching planes take-off, then land, take-off, then land, over and over… unless there’s a burial there’s none of that activity in the graveyard, none of your bury, exhume, bury, exhume… one, it would be macabre, and two you would need a team of overtakers to undo what undertakers do… there be dragons in both situations, snakes actually, grass snakes in the graveyard, not crawling with them although snakes do crawl, or actually slither (which incidentally is one of my favourite words) and by the airfield because it’s built on sand dunes as was, adders…… as such should a plane-spotter be really unlucky they could wind up in the graveyard sooner than they’d wanted…… but will the world end if they do die?… of course not, because I’m still here and even though I know in my head I’ll die one day (I’m sitting at a wooden table writing this incidentally with bare skin in constant touch with the wood) in my grand illusion tell me quite categorically it won’t happen to me.
© 2018 robert greig
