Waiting for the Fluttering

In my late teens, I’d lie by my sliding glass door and watch the sparrows come swooping down onto the seeds I dropped for them on the back patio. I’d listen to the fluttering and fall back to when I was a boy, walking out in the cold morning to catch the bus. How I’d go slowly towards the tangled vines by the sump fence where the finches flocked. I’d step, heel to toe, practicing invisibility. Becoming a transparency that nothing could touch, I’d move among them, unseen and unfelt, welcomed within their chittering warmth. I’d close my eyes and listen, disappearing, like years later while on the floor by the sliding glass door, waiting for the fluttering to envelop me.