Death dons his mantle of rust spattered metal and glass gritty with dirt. He prowls the hinterlands, like a rogue wolf searching for unsuspecting prey. He leaves a trail of burnt rubber and slick rivulets of oil.
Oblivious youths trundle by undulating golden fields jaundiced by the midday sun. They are in a bus filled with tangled threads of conversation and candy floss laughter. The novelty of life has not been tarnished yet and they are still sketching blueprints for their futures. Their juvenescence makes red wood giants of them. Their shiny new dreams render them invincible before the gales and breezes that blow from the corners of the world.
A wind emerges from the sea gasping answers to the questions Bob Dylan poses to life. It presses itself up against skin and knots hair. It billows into nylon curtaining that bears semblance to the sails of old and it whispers stories of their misadventures to those willing to listen.
A tractor growls past, but the striplings pay no heed to the weathered leather face pursed into a jaunty whistle that joins the slightly disharmonious symphony of the cicadas resting in the shade of leafy trees.
Yet still Death looms closer, guzzling at the distance separating life and oblivion. He homes in on his unwary victims. Lids heavy with insomnia droop and the steering wheel careens off course. The heavy crunch and pain-filled screech of metal on metal comes as such a bewildering revelation that the bus topples over a precipitous slope and tumbles end over end until it is nothing more than a crumpled cool drink can.
Bodies collapse like canvas tents. Skin embraces steel and shards of glass perforate flesh. Colossal red wood trees they are not, they are mere saplings, blown down by a single gust of wind. Blood creates metallurgy creeks in the dry dust, before it is greedily sucked up by the thirsty earth. Searing heat, unendurable pain and sharp-edged noise permeate the air. The final granules of sand slide from the top bulb of their hourglasses. Souls scatter and sprint their final good race. They have no time for the marathon.
These unrequited juveniles are violently robbed of the privilege to build their futures; their castles remain aloof in cloudy splendour. They have only ever grown wrinkled and mapped in the bath tub. They no longer have the prerogative to fade into the great blue yonder with a life time’s journey sewn to their heels.
Father Time dispassionately amasses his untimely harvest and swiftly departs, leaving only the stench of his rancid breath to imbue the senses of those left behind. He has unrelenting work before him until the minutes stopping ticking over into hours, days, weeks, months and years...
Death turns a remorseless back on the carnage. He continues along highways and down byways. He knows the motions by heart, if Death, indeed, has a heart.
