The Galaxy in a Maritime Arabesque

Day 28

Even snowflakes falling on a windless night don’t drift as slowly as the seagulls float on the wind over the Mediterranean. Spiraling up in a prismatic column of white heads and gray wings, tiny specks of birds flash in and out of the amber rays of sunlight sliding slowly over the ocean, down into the horizon behind the coastline. It’s as if the Milky Way has wafted down to the coast of Spain and the roaring hush of the wind has trapped me in a pocket of time, eyes locked in on the wonder of the ethereal birds, as if I were watching the movement of stars light years away. Stray birds are pulled into the cosmic spiral, an invisible hand spinning the vortex in place. Like the crashing mist of a waterfall caught in a moment for eternity in full force against the rocks, droplets rising in reactionary rebound and reverberation, the birds are so held, as my breath is held in my chest, the wind proctoring silent reverie, holding the coming rushing sound of the world. It’s the moment of prayer before the cracking stampede of amen. There’s a holiness holding the moment in place. Smoothing out the water in wide swatches of dark blue rubs, the wind rolls over the surface from which the birds rise, pushing excess swells to the shore like a baker rolling out dough. Boats sit out far enough from me to look like children’s toys forgotten in an evening bath, but close enough to the galaxy of gulls to hear their echoing cries. The boats sit in dropped anchor awe. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life.

And then, when winds taper, the spiral, like a wilting flower closes in upon itself and the cloud of birds settles like a fog on the gentle swells. Again!, again!, I whisper to the seagulls. Rise again! reincarnate the still beauty of your lightness. But somewhere a bullhorn sounds signaling the departing of a cruise ship, renting the sacred vacuum of the wind and the birds in flight. Heavy shadows of dusk fall like the closing of a curtain and its cold. I rise to leave, my bench still stares out to the fallen fowls, scattered like ever glowing fallen stars or the refracting rays of sunlight, caught in full sheen on the rise of an undulating wave.

The blessing of a Sunday afternoon in which one has the time to breathe deeply and feel the airy silence of flight.