Yesterday, near dusk, I heard a raucous flight of blackbirds.  It is a common enough thing to see them in a winter or spring stubble field, suddenly exploding into the air, veering at first in all directions and then gathering into one seemingly single-minded force of nature, a shared instinct and purpose no doubt older than the first man and likely to endure long after the last. Or perhaps not.

But this familiar noisy clatter did not soon fade into the distance, and I went out to watch. Birds were coming from north, east and south and joining into one endless streaming of dark passage to the west, like storm clouds racing with the wind, so many that I could actually hear the sound of wings.  I apportioned a segment of sky to estimate how many birds there were in all, and as they kept coming and going I stopped after several tens of thousands, and still they came.  I watched for at least ten minutes and never saw the last of their number.

I was reminded of the stories a Comanche grandfather told to the children, who were starving . . . how once the buffalo were so many that it took two days for a herd to pass by. and another for the clouds of dust to settle from the sky, each a blessing beyond counting.

Perhaps these birds too were one last great passage of and into the past, entering into a dark and deep distance, and buffalo or bird, we shall           never see their like again.  But I must hope they will yet come to you in your and their time, and you will remember your grandfather's stories and hear your own on the wings of birds.