supposed to be five mins (#4)
... birds birds birds
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no birds or writers were harmed in the making of this s2b5m (i’m not sure about fish).
the hawk, or vulture, or buzzard, but i think it was a hawk crosses the road with a fish in its feet. the part that was miraculous wasn’t that the fish had been found in a pond shaped like a field, stocked for the benefit of the farmer, but rather that the fish looks like the kind of fish you draw as a kid. the tail was a triangle, its body curved perfectly into the sharp point of its mouth. the fish could have been drawn, but i saw it shimmer, see its scales catching the sunlight as it sails overhead. i don’t know how to draw a sparkle. i’ve certainly never seen it done in crayon or colored pencil, though i supposed that’s what the white ones are for.
the fish was a bird, or a different type of bird maybe, i remember seeing them flicker across my path like a school of fish. their light grey or blue feathers caught in the sunlight and i imagine they are swimming. i think about the air again: air as a liquid, air with density, air as a conductor of light and sound and color. i think about the way it connects us, me to the birds, the birds to the fish, the fish to the ammonia-farm-blue of the ponds down the trail. is it the air that shimmers then, the way it bends itself around these objects in motion like those letters curving around the spine of the book: they drip, they’re folded, the angles are harsh enough to disrupt my field of vision.
i look up and i’m on a gravel road, reaching for a chocolate-coated peanut that is not an m&m. i’m going the speed that my car’s dashboard says i can, but i shouldn’t be, we’ve gone from road to dirt too quickly and i feel all four wheels find different grooves in the wind-trodden path. we swerve, my tires and i, we dance for a bit going back and forth and i try to remember what they told me about ice. but even then it didn’t snow, it wasn’t cold enough unless it was so cold you stayed indoors. i think in that moment of being in between about the consequences; there is no wall to crash against, the way i’m frightened in the parking garage, there isn’t even really a ditch, though i can no longer see the edges of the road from all the dust i’ve kicked up. i would feel safer if the trees were taller, if the grass were less green, if the road had been gravel from the start. i wonder, even in these instants where it dawns on me that i am not entirely in control, who is. and then i remember that i wield enormous power, me and my internal combustion engine, and think this is the price of living.
the birds switch directions like a herd of fish: like sheep being herded by a dogfish, like the chickens rambling on the side of the road– free range but someone’s guiding them. they aren’t as dumb or as impervious to fear as the deer, they stick to their side, to the earthworms burrowing into the unclipped blades of grass. in the cool shadow of the farmhouse or the roadside forest, i don’t see them greeting newcomers. even the stragglers hang back in groups, trios of geese taking off and landing in an impressive show.