The Profile of Birds

The Profiles of Birds High growth and thick foliage in an enclosure opposite our garden invited the golden orioles to stay on; often they perch on a bo tree or an old banyan sometimes chasing the irritant house crows sometimes coming close to us for a short stay soon to fly away. As the summer through rains was evaporating I found them often absenting; the idea that they might have migrated gave birth to a feeling of remorse for not snapping them during their course. Bright golden-yellow with sharp black patches preening and pruning with beak gnawed at my heart, incited me to seek and catch them to keep in memory digital. And then suddenly- peu peu peu- the call reverberated in the air; if not all, it must have reached a few. Ready with camera held in two hands as I stood below the drum-stick tree they were spreading wings, preening and pruning unafraid and free; seeing me close by, posing the instrument to catch they began love making, two of them dancing jovially jumping from branch to branch; it seemed entirely unusual and rare for them to so behave with me so near. I began clicking to catch and imprison the beauties forgetting that the Sun was at its youth- standing before me; a morning sooth like a real cul-de-sac. I caught, alas, the shadows of the birds, profiles surrounded by twisting branches and dark leaves, colourless facades. Though in my heart I have kept their images and song the idea to imprison them was perhaps wrong. I strongly feel that all this has been with the intervention of a presence unseen for things evanescent in any sense are to be realized only in essence.