Friday, April 19, 2013

I still think about that bird.

I still think about that bird.


Why is it, I still can’t get the image of that bird out of my head…out of my heart?

Lunacy? Did I ever deny that fact?

But still, by now, under this care, why do I still see that bird?

She was beautiful that overcast day.

Beautiful.

Beautiful…and sad.

Beautiful and sad and land based.

It had to have been fifteen years ago, when I witnessed what was to me the most tortured, tragic and seemingly insignificant event sadly unfolding along the backside of Statesboro, Georgia’s Main Street business district.

I saw a bird…walking down the…

Oh, wait. Lunacy, remember? Told that one already.

(Maybe a couple times…or maybe a couple times more than I should’ve.)

But…

But the thing about it is…

Well, I still think about that bird.

I don’t know much about birds. I don’t know her particular species or anything.

She was a kind of charcoaly-grey, occasionally white and then dark black. And she didn’t have that nervous shifty head movement thing birds usually have. She just walked along, moving her head in slow, almost deliberate movements.

When she looked my way, and I saw first one eye, then the next, they were jet black, like you dripped glossy black paint on a sunny day.

But they were sad.

I kept thinking she was going to fly away. There was a tree or two and plenty of utility cables for perching.

But she just walked.

Even, even when a car, I think it was a light blue Vega like my sister used to have when I was seventeen, drove very closely…she just walked by.

(I couldn’t sleep tonight…too much raw desire, emotion, passion, pain…which for me, renders itself out as love expressed in words…and deep, deep memories…)

When that car came rumbling down the street, I just knew she’d raise her wings, display her authority over such petty constraints as physics, and fly away.

But again, no.

She walked.

The original story for just a minute…

She walked the entire length of the city block, turned and continued walking.

I never once saw her fly.

I never once saw her again.

And, I still think about that bird.

I wonder what happened to her in the days after the day she walked down the street.

I wonder if she just stayed low. I wonder if kept a strict rule: park benches and under!

I wonder if she just spent whatever could’ve possibly been left of the life, of a walking from grassy place to grassy place, trying to muster up some food.

I wonder if she felt the way so many feel, when they feel they don’t measure up? (I hate to even allow this word to travel across my scarred brain!)

I wonder if she felt insignificant.

That word.

I am ashamed of myself for even letting it flutter across this QWERTY keyboard!

It is profanity in the highest ranks of all that is profane.

Reluctantly, I will again use my previous obscenity…insignificant.

I don’t know for sure if insignificance banished her from flight, but her feelings of such certainly seemed to keep her on the ground.

Feeling insignificant can be the most swallowing, overwhelming feeling. I’ve known the feeling. I’ve known it well. I’ve known it recently. I’ve known its weight.

This bird, this bird that walked down the street, she’s been in my heart and mind so much. I’ve been thinking about her for over fifteen years.

In other words, she has not been insignificant to me.

And I was just a bored guy, looking out a door.

Just a human.

If she wasn’t insignificant to me, can you imagine how God feels about her?

If she wasn’t insignificant to God, can you imagine how God feels about you?!

I can imagine.

God feels like you are significant.

(Well, actually…he knows it.)

So go fly!

(Oh...and don't be afraid to fly!)