Micro Story: 'Crows'

Have you ever seen how airplanes appear to hang totally motionless in the sky when your own speed and angle of travel countermands theirs? I've only seen it on the approach to London, from the A4, when the planes were perhaps a mile into their ascent from City Airport.

CROWS

The upper and greater of two crows angled itself explicitly into a bullet-shaped mark against a pearly-white strip of sky trapped beneath an ash-strapped darkened cloud. They glided precisely over the hedge, losing speed and height on a declining course, but from where I was, the first appeared to hang motionless for an improbably lengthened second.

You were sitting next to me when I last witnessed this optical pause in time and space. You won’t remember that though, your mind dwelt on more important things back then, and I hadn't said anything at the time; I didn’t want to distract you.

You won’t remember that morning. It was when the airplanes first flew again after that Icelandic volcano stopped all flights and we were driving to London to some or other meeting. The sky between the buildings was lemon tinted and from where we sat, in our angle of vision, because of the distance and our speed of travel, the planes appeared immobile again, but this time in the sky, as if they were painted on a mural. 

            For a moment I'd supposed they were model airplanes strategically placed between office blocks by a body of government wanting to reacclimatise us to the sight of human flight; to reassure us after many days of isolation that we would be reconnected.

Constantly anxious, I imagined reassurances but you gave them unasked, you were my personal government; a delicate chain of office, I imagined your effective management of my truths, imperfections, fey uncertainties and doubt.

I didn't doubt this crow; the control it exerted over its body against the wind was effortless.

It eventually floated into the corner of my watery eye, darker than India ink on coldpress paper, implacably solid, unreservedly precise. Its lower, lesser fellow, its doppelganger, flapped sluggishly after, untidy in its slipstream. Then there was nothing more than the road ruling onwards beside the brow of an arable field topped by a row of small silhouetted trees; three fat full stops.

I’m so sorry love; I should have flown today.