Midnight Memories with Plumes

I once found a sticker pasted to the underside of a Cambridge theater toilet seat. On its weathered face were printed the words "Listen: Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time". I am quite fond of the memory of that particular sticker as well as the Marx Brothers movie which shortly followed it's discovery. Those memories swirl through my head now and blend with vibrant feathers like a mirage swirling through the darkened hours of this sleepless midnight.

A Painted Bunting flashes its vibrant colors into my binoculars. Closer to home my mind replays the song of the Hermit Thrush, sung from a distant mountain top. Spangled in the shade of stunted trees a Mourning Warbler hops from branch to branch followed by the chirping of House Sparrows in a city park. Navy blue clad Harlequin Ducks frolic in the surface thrown by the waves that glance against the faltering rocks. "Phoebe" says my memory. A Night-Heron's shrouded form hunches on a distant dock, unaware of the elvin terns that dance over his black-crowned head.

The handsome head of a Tree Swallow appears from the dark confines of a bird house, its stunning blue and white plumage giving it an almost penguin like appearance, but any similarities with those denizens of the south is ruled out by the mirage of metallic feathers that rear out of the dunes of a Cape Cod beach. Swallows vanish and sound appears; the morning chorus flutes through my brain.

Listen: John Shamgochian has become unstuck in his mind.