Birds

I remember one morning in particular at the Lake House. It was summer then, as it always seems to be in my memories of that place, but on this given day I woke up visited by a flock of rare migratory birds. They’d chosen to stop off on their flight path and were sat in an old oak outside my bedroom window, all busy talking to each other, just saying the same thing over and over and over: “I’m here,” they said, “I’m here… now I’m over here.” Things were coming on top a little bit thеn but in the weary, worn-out haze of anothеr July hangover I found solace in their coming to find me… it’s stupid really, but it felt like a kind of message, and was something I really appreciated. I wonder if they still call in at that house by the water now, if they are still delivering that same message – over and over and over – not just to each other but an endless number of people feeling lost and a little bit alone, stretched out across vast continental arrays, a bedroom window waiting list waking up to that same message, over and over and over: “I’m here, I’m here, I am here, now; now over I’m here… I’m here.”

It must be every 20 months or so, when things tumble in a cycle, and it comes on top again. But I know where to find them, that old house by the water, writing weightless on the breeze… in the dead of night I find solace easy, shivering through the red bricks of the Down. And as those rare birds rattle like laughing fireworks overhead, I know – I know renewal is in the air. Lights off in the towers, I clock the vantage points, wading into the shallows. It’s funny… you fly halfway round the world, and there’s just one message that you choose to carry with you: “I’m here,” they say to each other. “I’m here…. I’m here.”