black bird, black bird
Saturday, December 30th, 2006, 8:51 am, by mg.
This insanely early morning just as the sun was coming up, the pups and I were walking out at shelby farms. The magenta glow at the bottom of the clouds turned into that strip of fire you see when the sun creeps in between the clouds and the horizon. You can feel the front moving in, and the air was silenced by the humidity, like when it snows. It was very quiet. Very still.
The wind was barely blowing from the east north east, and then there was a second wind. Like a breeze was coming through the trees off to my right. It was moving from behind, then over my head. I look up, and there is a 50ft wide ribbon of migrating blackbirds moving over me like a string blowing in the wind. It moved past me, then whipped back behind me, as if they were all a single piece of ribbon.
The noise of a light wind was all you could here from their wings all moving at once. They were quiet other than that. Then the ribbon became more directional, and the birds became a black river. Water flowing through an imaginery riverbed. Moving over imaginary rocks, and around imaginery bends, and under imaginery trees. And they sounded like a quite river.
Then the ribbon was back, and it stretched for as far as I could see. They just kept coming. They must have been traveling at 30+ mph, and this went on for probably 2 two and a half minutes. All I could do was just stand and stare in awe.
Then I thought about the next poor soul who would benefit from their taking rest on his property. Ewwwww.