Fall Note 4: Restless Air

The skies are darkening. Proper October weather now. I pulled in near the East Pier in Dún Laoghaire.

I noticed THESE GULLS almost immediately, on a lamp-post a few yards from my car. Then I walked onto the pier. A woman was sitting on the bench near the ornamental cannon, feeding the pigeons, gulls and other birds (possibly starlings). The air was full of wings. I don't think it was just the scraps of bread. Birds were wheeling crazily all over the place. There was a definite suggestion of restlessness, the bird's equivalent of a departure lounge.

The restlessness of birds reminds me of the restlessness of Autumn leaves. So the last lines from this (very Autumnal) poem, 'Leaves', by Derek Mahon, came to mind:

Somewhere there is an afterlife
Of dead leaves,
A stadium filled with an infinite
Rustling and sighing.

Somewhere in the heaven
Of lost futures
The lives we might have led
Have found their own fulfillment.