Hidden in Plain Sound

 There was a man who loved the river noisily flowing through the beautiful birdsong wood. Although the man owned the wood, he wondered if he owned the river or, at least, that part of the river flowing through his wood or, at the very least, the river-bed under that part of the river’s water flowing through his wood or, at the very very least, the uncertain edges of the two river-banks themselves.

Such considerations regarding the rights of riparian ownership stirred him further to consider things — and one such consideration related to the air directly above the wood’s winding river. Indeed, what about all the air in the wood? And then, of course, there was the sky itself above the wondrous wood — and one must not forget the earth reaching from below the wood towards the Antipodes — and beyond!

The man sat in his beautiful birdsong wood musing upon considerations that fed further considerations until his brow furrowed. And while he sat musing, he dabbled his toes in the flowing river itself and, thus, he mused not only upon the edge of the river-bank upon which he physically perched but also upon the selfsame edge as a philosophical subject-matter leading to a stream of consciousness.

He wondered if, at the very very very least, he owned his own toes.

But further considerations ceased as, suddenly, the wood erupted with squawks of birds scattering from the trees into the wide blue sky. And the man walked home to his mansion, his head in the clouds. But did he own his mansion in the same way as he owned the trees in the land that surrounded it, a package deal once purchased or captured by war- or hate-like means, a package indeed of a building and its legally accrued territory of wooded acres.

The land belonged to the earth or to himself? He now no longer bothered with such matters as he suddenly saw smoke rising from the mansion’s roof. Was it from a chimney or the through the gaps in the roof slates themselves? — this being the crucial question and he could not yet quite judge because of the trees through which he now ran. Did he even own himself? He briefly swept his ageing blonde hair with a hand, and he thought of a future actor playing him in a future TV docu-drama, with a skill of acting far too good As Evil. An over-real theatrical depiction. Groomed a whole nation territory, high- and low-born alike. An actor’s ownership.

The converted mansion was alight from end to end, a careless institution of yore. Screaming faces at its windows. And he crossed himself … crossed himself out, too. Too late, too late, called the birds from the sky above as a mind’s thought not a heard sound. The river’s noise now deaf to any echo. Hidden in plain silence.