Soul Music
3 – Swallows
My uncle and I flew paper swallows from the high bedroom window. They caught the lifting wind, drifted above the narrow road and pointed metal railings that had somehow escaped the Spitfire Fund, into the small park with its swings, roundabout and curving metal slide. Origami birds designed centuries before man took to the sky. I make them still. But now they fly over a far different world where computer obsessed children view them with indifference. There is something therapeutic about working with paper: fold left, press along the crease, fold right, press along the crease until the skin’s impression is absorbed and incorporated into the structure, part paper part person. Unlike merely pressing a key or moving a joystick on a video game. In Ancient Egypt, birds were thought to carry the souls of the dead. I fly many swallows now, one for each of the lost. They soar high over fields lush with grass, towards the waiting arms of the sea. Do they carry the dead souls of family and friends? Or are they carriers of my hopes and memories, riding the wind of imagination to a better place? I fly my swallows for those who are gone. Who will fly a swallow for me?