The Ebon Gale of Passerines

         I was headed back after a short trip when I saw this black wind blow across the path, valley-side to hill-side. It crossed the dirt path through the woods about a football field away. The weather was overall pretty mild. The biting bugs were active enough to necessitate deterrence. It was a typical spring day only interrupted by this cloudy dark mass in the distance. In recollection I seemed to have a dog at heel, a St. Bernard maybe. Yet there was no dog at that time, just an eerie false impression left in my memory.
         Anyway, it turned out to be birds. A flock in the hundreds flooding into a kind of gully. As I headed hard toward this inky swarm steeped in curiosity, I thought of the mosquitoes which had harried me on the way in. That black blur of birds must have picked-off hundreds or thousands of their nettling number. Scratching at a reddening mark near the wrist, it occurred to me that my blood may have been among that swarm. It may have been consumed, in turn, by the flock of feathers. In their time they will suffer the final pestering of rot and consumption. Consumption and rot, the processes which perpetuate. That's when I thought: I am the dirt that feeds the trees.