Inflight

I take each day as it comes.

I go to work.

I come home.

I drink a beer.

I expect you do pretty much the same.

Except you don’t stand at the window, like I do, watching the night revolve, big and dark and cold.

I never sleep, I don’t need to sleep.

Without sleep I have all the time I need. Time when I don’t need to eat. Time when everyone else sleeps, everyone except the old, except for the incarcerated, or the blind, the security guards and the taxi drivers, the shift workers and the dead.  And the travellers.

I have learnt to stand at the window and watch the night. I watch the night. I watch the night. I see the aeroplane lights, the flight paths from south to north, from north to south. From Alicante to Liverpool, from the Canaries to Glasgow.  They leave bright vapour trails against the darkness.

Passengers sleep. Passengers drink. Passengers read inflight magazines. Passengers hold hands.

Fleeting

There was a time, long ago, when we lived in a time as slow as the glaciers. But as we grew older, life began to accelerate. Once upon a time we believed everything was forever. We were young and ignorant.  Those of us lucky enough to be born in spring lived in the froth of perpetual blossom. Now, of course, blossom is but one of the brief explosions of colour in the fleeting years. Decades pass in a few breaths. The hills breathe too, they heave and fall. The sky is a blur.

Trees burst through the sea of soil, flashing black against the roils of green. Bright rings spin across the sky, flickering.  Stars explode and their nebulae dissolve. Universes rise and fall. Eternity is strobed.