All Write, Already!

In the suburb I grew up in, the migratory patterns of black birds marked the turning of the year. I remember as a child being so completely enthralled by their visits.

Sitting in the back seat, looking out and seeing them turn the thin black lines between telephone poles into thick lines, alive and moving and breathing. They would scoot over to make room for more birds when it seemed like there was no more room. Sometimes we would stop at a traffic light and the birds would all fly up off of one wire in a huge black swarm and then, in a psychedelic wave pattern, they would casually swoop up and around and then regroup on another wire entirely.

Thousands upon thousands of them. You could hear them all talking to each other in hushed tones. Small chirps and squawks became choruses of whispers that joined together so loud that you could barely hear yourself talk. They dotted the sky, and their movements were mathematical algorithms, like some advanced three dimensional graphing calculator. They always gave me a sense of comfort and continuity when they came. I didn’t know what they were and I barely understood why they came, but there was something epic and grand about them. They perched all along the roads like gargoyles in some great cathedral, and they gave me a sense of security that made me intimately aware of some of the more psychological purposes of the stone sentinels in old gothic architecture.

They don’t come through quite as often anymore. Neither do the monarch butterflies that used to migrate through here as well. I don’t know if it’s because the Houston “swamp”(If you can still call it a swamp) has become less hospitable to them, or if perhaps they found a better route. But every now and then we’ll have some of their descendents dotting the powerlines, and when they do come, it always fills me with that childlike awe and wonder that ever so slowly drains out of adults. I’ll often find myself sitting at a light for a few seconds longer, after the light has turned green, in a desperate attempt to seize that feeling and hold onto it a little longer. Then the car behind me honks and I am torn away from the intersection of my modern life and the pure unadulterated joy of my childhood, leaving it defended by my little black sentinels.