Flock of Pigeons

A shape-shifting cloud comprised of dozens of pigeons took off from a low-slung building near 67th Street. Widening, elongating, radiating, and narrowing, it traversed to the east over Lexington Ave, rose on a thermal, soared back westward, circled over the avenue again and alit on a the roof of a slightly higher building adjacent to where it began. Barely settled for a minute, one by one, like drops of water falling from a faucet or pebbles rolled over an edge, each pigeon then hopped off the roof and landed a story below on the roof of the building from where the cloud first a lit.

A few minutes later, spurred by a warning or disruption unbeknownst to be from my viewing point on the sidewalk at ground level, the pigeon cloud blasted off again, once again traversing Lexington east and west and around again, rising higher on a thermal, the cloud condensing and expanding as the birds moved in unison until they settled again on the same roof as before, and then once again dropped one by one to the adjacent roof.

The cycle repeated itself several times before I felt the need to press on and head to the subway for my commute. And yet my mood had changed. The contorting geometry of the flock of pigeons in flight transported me from thinking of the concrete surroundings of my walk as devoid of more-than-human life (the trees have lost their leaves, and there was little if any greenery along the avenue), to a sense of awe for the beauty of the birds in collective flight.

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