On the ledge. I can see the coast coming near one of our planes. A thunderbolt. Plunging down and up again. Seconds later we heard the rattle of machine guns. That night we lay among hedgerows. The night was black. There was thrashing in a hedgerow. A burst of firing in the morning. A dead cow. A plane droned overhead. One of theirs diesel with a rhythmic sound.

Then the bombs came whistling down. We were strung out on an embankment. Side by side. In a straight line. Like infantry in World War One. Waiting for the whistle to blow. The Germans knew we were there. And were firing everything they had. Bullets passing right above. I knew that in a moment the order would come. There is a page in dusty sky about a man being given the choice to die, or to stand on a ledge through all eternity.

Alive and breathing the air. Looking at the trees and sky. The wings of a butterfly as it drifts from stem to stem. But men who have stepped off the ledge. Know all that there is to know who has survived the bloody angle. Verdun. The first day on the sun. As it turned out, we didn’t have to. Instead, they used typhoons.

They flew over our heads, firing rockets on the German positions. So it was easy. We just strolled over the embankment and down the other side and across an open field. Yet, like the man on the ledge, I still haven’t moved. Watching an ant climb a blade of grass and climb back down.

Tags: Poetry