8/17/10

Flocks of birds: I once rescued this little sparrow-like bird from the cat next door. The cat was luckily still at the clawless, fangless phase of pouncing & batting. The bird was grayish with black & white streaks on its head. I pulled the cat away, and the bird flew about 20 feet, to rest in the grass for a couple minutes, then flew off into the woods of the vacant lot. Next day, there were three little birds with identical markings waiting on my front steps. (which never happens—my front steps are flanked by a gravel patch and the front driveway. Hot & stark) The birds flew up and circled my front steps a few times, then they flew around me about 3 times, kind of like a Disney film only heartfelt, and then flew off. I took it as a thank you for my efforts on behalf of their sister the day before.

One summer when people began arriving to this family camp that we go to, a flock of a dozen or so white pelicans circled the campus, a couple hundred feet overhead. They have a huge wingspan, pelicans, and these critters used it to advantage, seeming to turn around a central axis like a whirligig, or in an s-formation like the division of the yin-yang symbol. White birds, with black trailers on their wingtips. Circling, forming & reforming patterns overhead, which we took as a welcome to camp.

The living cyclone of chimney swift flocks falling into chimneys at dusk, emerging at dawn.

A mass of starlings on the wires, lifting in unison and moving as waves, as one thought, as a giant picture of a bird.

A startle of pigeons, whistling and whirring out from under the overpass, flashing mauve and periwinkle and mother-of-pearl in the afternoon light.

Geese in that iconic delta.

To understand the spaces between wingtips, the spaces between beating hearts. To understand the magnetism in the mind, finding the right place after months, a year, another life. To fly because you have to, and have it be ordinary, not miraculous.