Jeffrey Harrison

RARE BIRD

While we were waiting for the movie to begin,my wife caught up with her old friend Maryann,and because I could only make outthird or fourth word, my attention fluttered offin search of something else and landed onthe thirty-five-ish couple sitting three rowsin front of us—the backs of their headsand then the bare left arm and handof the young woman, who kept gatheringlocks of her long, straight auburn hairbetween her middle and index fingers, pullingeach tress away from her head and throughher extended fingers with a dexterous twistthen letting it fall and gathering another,over and over seemingly without thinkingas she chatted with her husband or companion.There was something about that movement—graceful but ordinary, not erotic—that made me look harder, until, entranced,I watched as those two slender fingerstransformed into the flexible beak of a birdwhose head was the rest of her hand andbody her forearm perched on the seat’s armrest …as if this bird, without the woman knowing,and through this repeated, fluid motion,was stripping some minuscule form of nourishmentfrom the strands of her hair as from the bladesof seaweed, the way flamingos sift the shallowsfor tiny organisms. The bird kept feeding,and I kept staring, nourishing myself perhapsimpalpably. I wanted to show Julieand Maryann, but not to interruptmy looking or their conversation—then the lightsdimmed and the movie started. I don’tremember what it was, some documentary,I just remember that bird, and how it feltas though I’d made a rare sighting, right therein the middle of the movie theater,of a species strange and beautiful,the finger-billed whimbrel, an itemto add to my life list, if I kept one.