The Tongue

The traffic was slow moving and I had given up on being in a hurry.  It was an unusually warm January night and I was taking advantage of it by driving with the window rolled down.  The grumbling engines were so loud, that I had to turn the radio to an almost deafening level to mask their obscenity.  A woman beside me, in a dirty red car, leaned her head against her window as if she had decided to take a quick nap.  The cars, trucks, and vans all formed a solid wall around me.  I felt trapped and helpless and my nerves tightened as the traffic slowly inched its way forward.

         When I had finally made it over the hill, I saw the troublesome traffic light ahead of me.  The sun sank into the west and the light, which just minutes before had been proud and insistent, was slowly dying. It was then that I noticed something unusual in the sky.  A big black tongue was stretched out across the horizon and it flailed in the wind like a massive flag.  I sat there entranced while the traffic noise bubbled all around me.  My mind forgot all that had consumed it before and concentrated on the giant spectacle way up in the sky.  I wanted to see the beginning of the dark endless thing.  I wanted to see if there was a giant mouth behind it, gobbling up the earth.  The light turned green and the traffic began to move.  I found myself directly underneath the black mass and was able to see it in greater detail. There were thousands and thousands of tiny black birds flapping their little wings.  They were flying erratically while they followed the bird directly in front of them.  When I searched for their origin, I saw none.  They were endless.

         It was both sad and beautiful at the same time.  The earth shaking spectacle that I had witnessed earlier was nothing more than a magic trick.  Science was satisfied, but I was not.  I wanted to feel the powerful weight of the unknown again.  So I willed myself into a Neanderthal.  I forced myself to see through the eyes of the innocent; through the eyes of a child.  I saw it!  I saw it clearer than I had before.  It was a black river roaring, a dead tongue laughing, and a deep dark crack in the wounded purple sky.

         I was so excited that I twisted around to see the people in their cars all around me.  I wondered if they were watching too.  But when I looked back up, all I saw were thousands of little birds.  I thought to myself, “What do they see when they look down at us?  Is it anything close to what I see when I look up?”  The traffic light turned green.