The Sky Alive...

I was walking toward the subway at 86th Street on 87th Street between Third Avenue and Lexington, thinking about how bad the economy really is as I walked past empty store fronts that seemed to be multiplying by the day. As the grayness of times started to cloud my thinking I was startled by the mass fluttering of swooping birds. I looked up to see the sky filled with pigeons. Pigeons are far from being my favorite bird; I tend to go along with the assumption that they are basically flying rats. Their cooing makes my hair stand on end,but looking at these birds doing pirouettes in the sky over leafless trees and around a church steeple was impressive. They were acting in unison, turning on a dime, spinning in orchestrated movements. I stood there looking up and several other pedestrians stopped to look at what I was seeing. One mother with a little girl, encouraged her to look and when the girl saw the birds she started clapping, 'Are they trained, mommy?' 'Maybe' she said. This struck me as a mystery but really not one. I had witnessed this type of flying only once before and that was in London, and the birds were trained by a bird man, who kept the pigeons in coops on a rooftop and every day he would let them out and they would do hijinks in the sky entertaining the masses. My thought was, who was training this flock of rock doves? I watched for a little longer waiting to see what rooftop they would end up on but they were too caught up in their flying phenomenon to stop for a second and I was running late for an appointment. I left with the mystery of who the bird man was that was keeping this flock and what rooftop their coop was located on, flying in my head? I watched one more pass and walked on still looking up at the luminescent turquoise sky alive with pigeons...