As If a Bird Flew By Me: A Novel

Blackbird

1 BLACKBIRD The sky is a trampoline, a gasp, a dream. It’s here and there and in between. It’s my life and yours. It’s particle and wave. It’s thick, it’s thin. It’s breath and exhale, it’s countless lungs filling. It’s molecule and pollution, warmth and chill. Falling fully splendored, the air catches a blackbird. The bird rises, the ground dropping away to sky and up, the wind exalted, above. A salty tide pulls from the shore. The bird has a tiny heart, beating, its scaled feet clutched behind it, shadowed by its body, and it keeps with the upsurge, the stars in their daylight slumber. It shrees from every tall place it can find—shrubs, cattails, bridges. Surround it with openness and it will call and spit and sing out the day. There’s certain beauty in what it is, in its name—redwinged blackbird, four strong beats, a song to the world. Here is the winged and the red and the black. And it is not alone. The flocks mottle the marsh with their earmarked territories. To call is simple. To fly is better. Give up and go into the grace of sky. ...