History Sighs.

The wrinkles in the man’s face
shape his skin into a smile. I spot
something in his eyes and I’m off
and there with him in that turret,
his heart like a thunderbird’s wing
as it takes off against the wind.
His fingers tickle the trigger,
he is ready for anything and
if it comes down to it he is
ready for nothing. He hears
the chatter of the young guys
below in the body of the plane,
and he knows they’ve been told
that the enemy can hear them. He
doesn’t blame them because he can
remember his first time, and how
he never imagined how really real
all of this is. He is more nervous
because of this new crew, and the
fact that his old crew was shot
down while he was somewhere
following other orders. These
new guys they don’t know the
numbers, how when he was almost
home, they raised the mission
requirement one more time and
now he has to sit and sweat while
they chatter like rabbits below him.
Or how it’s simply statistics that he
is fighting against. The house has
lost up until now, and he doesn’t
feel comfortable betting on these
boys he just met the other day.
His fingers sweat as they tickle
the trigger, and he is ready, and
he is forced to do his best and
hope these boys realize sooner
than later how serious this really is.
But the wrinkles on his face
shape his skin into a smile,
and I say ‘thank you’ for
his purchase and walk him
towards the door. He fought
the numbers and came home
to his wife and lived this long
still living against the numbers.
This is a man who doesn’t buy
green bananas because he’s not
certain he will ever see them ripe
and I have the urge to tell him ‘thank
you’ again, but something chokes my
throat, and I let him walk out to his car.
And somewhere in the back of this
theater of life and loss someone
asks the host what was meant.
And History sighs, and repeats itself.

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[TLK]

A disconnected sequence of history, endlessly spiralling.