the bird that never flew is a time traveller

A cutting wind, a fierce snow flurry at the bus stop this morning. The waking world suddenly sliding into abstraction. Hard edges soften, light runs down the glass. Certainties slacken, skate down the glass in icy crystals.

The bird that never flew looks at me with a jealous eye. Or perhaps a promising eye: green light for go. Whichever. For a few moments it was just the paradoxical bird and myself looking at one another. A symphony of snow rousing and dashing with the north wind, melting the traffic to a blur on the glass partition.
A year ago I stared through this same bird design at another stop. I had just moved into my previous flat. I was tired, dark and baggy green eyed myself. There I am, looking back through time to this moment now, through the portal of this bird design. The bird that never flew has given me wings to fly to the future. The green allows me to go. And through its green eye and my green tired eyes of last March I see myself there. Framed in the bird. Looking to this future with weary hope.

Someone else arrives at the stop and I look away. Break my connection with this portal to the past. All there is, I realise in my sudden surfacing into the present moment, is myself here waiting for a bus, the snow all around me like wedding confetti. All there is, is the hand out to stop the bus, the step up to board, the sigh of the closing doors. The weary look remains locked in the bird behind me.

And off to work, leaving the time travelling bird that never flew to the next traveller.