A Scene

Every once in a while I'll have a moment, a fragment of time that seems out of place. It just seems too perfect to have occurred naturally. I had one of those on Friday.

I was coming out of the grocery store after a long day at work when it happened. I had used the self-service lanes, and the plastic bags holding my purchases were filled awkwardly. Stepping through the automatic doors, my eye was caught by a flock of crows overhead. The sun had just set, but the sky was still a bright blue. The absence of the sun's diffuse rays brought the parking lot into sharp relief, and the black birds' outline showed clearly against the incandescent sky. A split-second later another group passed overhead, and then another. Soon the entire sky was filled with the currents of an avian tide, flowing in an arc across the visible sky and then crashing into some unseen barrier, doubling back against itself into swirling eddies of hundreds of opaque bird-shapes, then diffusing into nothing.

I couldn't help but stop where I was to watch. It seemed at the time like there was no other noise but the soft slapping of wings, then a sharp wet splat on the pavement near my shoe brought me out of my reverie just enough to realize that I shouldn't look directly up.

When the moment had passed, I started back towards my car. Another passer-by who had been there smiled at me and said, "Pretty scary, huh?" I said yes, but I didn't think it was scary. I thought it was extraordinary. It was something from a painting. It was something from a movie. It was a scene too beautiful to be taken from a day in my life.