A Thousand Birds

I don’t remember the difference between a hawk and a vulture when they are up there, and I am down here. It has something to do with the shape of the wings as they soar, both so gracefully, both looking for food, though the vulture likes his dead first. I should commit the difference in their appearance to memory, as my husband did, because it’s important. I remember my old license plate from nine years ago and telephone numbers and addresses from when I was little. I know that the parts compose the whole, and the whole comprises its parts.

But I can’t remember about the birds.

The wind picked up yesterday and today, and the crows and starlings seemed to float, as if it were their day off. These swarms of birds went back and forth across North Avenue, from the cemetery to my left turn at Maryland, staying just ahead of my car. I wanted to pull over and take the picture of a winged black hole in the sky over the burned-out building on the corner, but I was on my way somewhere. I am always on my way.

This morning, as I passed more windswept, dancing birds before work, the light was perfect, as if a storm and the sun were battling, but the storm had no chance. Amber light shone through a bus shelter, which had yellowed, smoky glass marked up with black graffiti. Someone had sprayed a percent symbol over the bus route map, had written God on the western pane. A young black man was waiting for the bus on the bench inside, the sun lighting up his face and “God,” word and man glowing, as if to deliver a message sure to be mistaken because of its irony. I wanted to swerve into the right lane and slam on my brakes. I thought about circling the block to get the picture, but I drove on, late for work anyway.

In that flurry of indecision making, I almost missed the moment.

My daughter calls me the Photogeek. My husband rebels against technology and, consequently, me, complaining that I would rather capture the world on a flash card than live in it. Maybe that’s true. The momentary delight of an angelic urban man in a bus shelter doesn’t last long in my memory. And how do I recall the birds swooping and soaring, in numbers so big that they seemed to carve out a hole and carry away the sky?

Much as I love my camera, I know my true calling is not answered with a Nikon D200. I can click that moment and save it, print it out, share it. And maybe I want to because no one else lived it; maybe no one else will frame it just right, put it in the proper context. I’ll bet hundreds of people drove past that man this morning, and not a single one of them saw God.

And I guess that’s why I write: so that someone else might be able to see god every time I see it.

Tomorrow morning, I leave for New York; it’s a fast-and-furious field trip related to my MFA program. I will be on my way for two and a half civilized hours, when I can watch the birds out the window or read a book and not be in any hurry to do anything. When I get there, I’ll meet up with my schoolmates and some Flickr-ers I’ve never met before. Thursday will be filled with agents and publishers and magazine editors, and Friday will be another slow day—for picture taking and tall-building watching. I know that no matter what kinds of images I capture and imprison on my digital memory cards, they will be nothing like the ones I manage to release in words.

Frankly, I’m in this life for the words. And for the birds. They are what is important.