The Clamour of Wings
On silence, listening, and the return of the light
The sun is high and the air is cold and bright and it is what we, all, have been waiting for. I am beside the sea and the water pushes in against the stone promendae, white flecked edges, shifting surface glittering. It is quiet in this world of noise - or rather, it is quiet in my mind as the sounds around me filter in. The sound of the sea on the shore, the burr of the wind, the pat of our feet as we walk. We walk toward the towers on the horizon.
Past the beach, where pastel beach huts press together at the boundary of grass and sand, there is a raised concrete path that veers away, just slightly, from the ocean. It follows the fields inland, skirting the edge of a shallow lake that sits beside the sea. The colours are vivid, brighter than it is possible to remember after months of dreary grey. The fields glow. The wind is sharp, my collar tight, cheeks burning, blushing in the force of it.
Ahead, on the horizon, before the towering ruin that marks the turning point of our walk, a cloud rises. Dark, thick, it flows up, into the sky, then ripples across it. A murmuration? Birds, certainly, bodies dark against the light, swopping together as one, moving tightly with the guidance of the body in front, leading the body behind. But they are far away, only black specks, a shifting, formless cloud from here. They flit across the fields, across the path, the lake, to settle on the sea. When we draw close we can hear them; chattering, so loud and constant we can hear it long before we reach them.
We draw level with the low gravel lake. The sound is a clamour, a chatter, a fluster. They are on the water, the other side of the shingled bank; we cannot see them. They are so loud. I bring out my phone to check the bird song app; Brant Geese. But the way they moved, so sinuous, so flowing - I thought they were a smaller, swifter bird, starlings, perhaps, from the way they moved. I put the phone away convinced it is wrong. Certainty, so often a thing to cling to, so rarely safe.
And then, all at once, sudden, they rise. The sound of their call saying it is time to leave. The sound of their wings in the air. The sound of their feet leaving the water. A cloud of them, overhead. They are, indeed geese; hundreds of them. Bodies fill the sky, bold and dark and moving together. Wings breaking the air, the sound of their feathers slicing, the stretch of them, shadows across the path, across our faces as we stand, motionless, captivated, to watch them soar. They keep coming and coming and coming. So many of them, all at once deciding it is safe. All at once, moving together. They settle back on the field where they started. They peck at the ground. So many of them I cannot see how their presence will do anything but decimate the crop. Their chatter subsides. They have returned.
We reach the towers, the ruins of a roman fort. The sea pushes in at the steps to the beach, stone swallowed by water, and I watch it licking the luminous green weed, splsahing against the solidity of our man made structures. We turn back and the tide turns with us. Once again, we pass the geese. The scarer booms in the distance. Occasionally a handful flutter up, settle back down. But they are not scared, not unnerved. We stay and watch them for a while, hoping for another display, but they are settled. They are here to stay.
When we get back to the beach the tide is out, revealing the jagged stumps of wooden groynes long since fallen into disuse. They stand like the ribs of a great sea creature, stranded on the sand, left to rot. Behind the once again distant towers, the sun sets, a great flaming ball of red. The world settles into dusk. And I take the great red ball of it, the wooden spines of the abandoned groynes, the new purple of the sky, the chatter of geese and their bodies, black streaking marks against the sun. I take them with me into my evening and past it, into my week, into my consciousness to return to when the world seems small.
