Another Place

What strikes us is the stillness.

It’s a common place: “above us only sky.” The beach just keeps on going: the sand shows the traces of a kid who scribbled “Poo!” inside playful speech balloons again, and again, and again. You have to stand there to understand. The men are stilll with their feet buried, they can’t smell but in the distance lookalikes copy them with tripods and lenses walking dogs, getting fit, there are no waves. Some tankers pass by slowly. The men are standing facing beyond, up straight, cold and covered in scars left by other living organisms. This is all about the tide and the wind, the expanse of land, the vastness of the sky. Here are the iron men, ageing monuments rooted to the landscape which is theirs, ghostly like people, but harder, alone amongst all the others, with chests and legs pierced by painful solid pipes, dreaming of one day reaching faraway lands. Instead they go farther, deeper, without moving. Eventually they drown. The next morning they are still at it, waiting for another day. Until a sea of time swallows them completely.