Empty Places

I’ve been mesmerized by birds lately.

Each day on my way home from work I sit at the same stoplight, a busy intersection near a train track. Lately, between 5:15 and 5:30, there have been hundreds of birds there. I have no idea where they all come from. I sit in my car, listening to the click click click of my turn signal, and stare at them. Small, dark colored birds, I don’t know what kind, flying in swarms, flitting back and forth and up and down and close together and far apart and back and forth again in a pulsating motion, suspended in mid-air not unlike schools of fish in the ocean. They dance in groups, directed by some invisible choreographer, rising and falling as if on cue. They seem to know exactly how to move in order to keep from running into any of the other eight hundred flapping dancers.

Because of the recent time change, the sun is already starting to set during my drive home. The shimmering disc floats just above the horizon, casting a warm glow on the clouds, turning them into puffs of strawberry cotton candy strewn across the sky. The telephone lines reflect the fall sun as bright orange strings where the birds gather to rest. For one brief moment they all clamor to balance on the phone lines. They squeeze in, fill in the gaps, chattering noisily like a crowd. I start to wonder what it’s like to be a bird. What do they do all day? Is their entire life comprised of dancing and resting on telephone wires? What did they do before telephone wires? What must it have been like to be out for a walk, and come across a tree, full of birds that were chirping and hopping from branch to branch, buzzing with life like a beehive? The verse comes to mind about God caring enough to keep every bird fed, and how much more important we are to God than birds. I wonder if He has named each and every one of them.

Then, at some unseen signal, in one swift rippling motion they all lift up, fly away, disperse, filling the sky with small dark dots. The golden lines are suddenly vacant. I am no longer thinking of them as wires, but as empty places were birds used to rest. I wonder if they will all return, if ten minutes from now someone else will be sitting at the light and notice the birds all sitting there anxiously waiting for takeoff.

But then the light turns green and the car in front of me moves. I forget about the birds and focus on the traffic. I drive away, my turn signal silencing itself, leaving the road behind me, an empty place were I used to rest.