For the Birds

Today, while treading my way along on the treadmill (I recently - as in, on Tuesday - started back at the gym), I listened to my iPod and stared out the window. It was a cloudy morning, the ragged remnants of yesterday's rainstorm were slowly packing their bags and seeking new places to inundate. They would have been welcome to stay.

While others using the treadmills stared at the attached televisions, earplugs connecting them to the electronic network of news, reality TV, soap operas, stock reports, throngs of talking heads, oceans of vitriol, wells of soporific mind-Valium, I stared out and watched the clouds shape themselves to my observation.

Have you ever looked out into a grey, cloudy sky, one where some clouds are slightly more, some slightly less, some faster, some slower, than the others? And the light caught them just so, and you could see hazy, indistinct shapes slinking through the shadowy wetness?

There was a gryphon, and then a hummingbird. A dove, then a raven. I watched them, and they watched me.

The gryphon was crouched low, wings mantling, eye on some tiny bit of prey (the hill beneath him, I imagined). He was a darker grey overlaid on a bright little patch, miles long if I measured. He turned and looked at me, then went back to his intent contemplation of his hillside snack.

The hummingbird poked her head from a darker swell and sipped from the tallest pines before pulling back to wispy nothingness.

The dove spread her wings wide, sheltering the Earth beneath her from soul-staining darkness. She floated on, spreading herself thinner and thinner until she dissipated.

Finally came the raven. His eye was sharp, a great bright orb, and he saw all. Ravens are history keepers, as are all the Corvids. He watched, and he remembers, and if I one day find him and ask what he saw, he may tell me. Beak open, he uttered a soundless, spirit piercing cry before he flew.

Most days, I look inward while I walk - today, I am glad to have looked out.