eyes to see

At the corner of Griswold and State in downtown Detroit, the streets lie empty. The low ambient tide of surrounding noise absorbs the occasional passing car, leaving no interruption to the impression of silence.  Here in the rainwashed graylight just before dawn, all is still. 

Glancing from side to side, I cross Griswold against the advice of the traffic light, breathing the fresh smell of water in the air.  It’s not a good week.  My head feels congested, both by viral symptoms and unhappy thoughts; anxiety twists my stomach.  Sunk into a gloom that matches the downtrodden exhaustion exuded by the lightless skyscrapers in a city long faded from glory, I step toward the puddle at the edge of the curb and start to fall into the habitual obliviousness of the daily walk from my stop to the office.

I don’t know what catches my attention and draws my gaze up.  Maybe it’s an edging in my vision.  Maybe it’s the sound of wings.  But just before I reach the puddle, I pause and turn, and find myself staring over the little square at a flock of pigeons wheeling into flight.

Hundreds of birds, black against the overcast sky, dip and scatter and soar in a synchronicity arresting in its thoughtless grace.  The breeze, thrown into vortex by the ash-gray, soot-darkened skyscrapers, surges in waves of air under the multitude of wings; the flock sweeps up against the wind and billows in slow ripples like sheets.  The gyre widens, narrows; the flock dissolves, spins apart, swirls back together.  Ribbons of pigeons, streaming in spirals of flight, around, and around, and around the open valley of air over the square. 

I have never seen anything this beautiful.

Mouth open, forgetting everything, I stand with my face to the sky, watching, wondering what moves them to flight, wondering, as they swell to the top of the corner building and begin, in scattered waves, to alight on rooftop and windowsills, what moves them to stop; watching the thinning banner of birds who circle the square just a few more times, losing a few to the rooftop each time they come back around, until they have nearly all landed, returning the square to its empty morning stillness.  In all of this, there is no sound but the susurration of distant traffic, or possibly wings.