Bouncing off the Heaviside Layer

Trashing Complexity. There is no time for me to tell you what I mean here. There is no time to walk a mile or two before breakfast and then decide where you want to go today. I will meet the voice of an old dead soldier walking a mile or two before dinner to return the medal of a friend to the battlefield where he died, his finger in his mouth in panic at the gas and statues all around. This field so white has never grown a crop since then; sowed with salt they say, unwatered and the birds will not go there. They are reminded of the white light, like noise through the shell of their eggs and they fly away to other continents. We do not encourage this rambling. It is dangerous to us all and might turn up a shell waiting for a suitable pattern of weather, waiting for someone to put their foot down carelessly, to blow them high into the sky. Bruises were all they suffered said the caption to the picture but we know that those commandos fell to earth minus limbs and unconscious. It was propaganda that they survived. There is no identity in newsprint; we cannot tell anyone from this small and blurry record of the battlefield. The thickening of fear has taken over all men who walk this mile before their supper and the day's end. The light is pale and sinks with the battlefield until the flowers curl back into themselves and reveal the blasted dust beneath. The water swirls away and is gone.