Every evening at dusk in the jungle city of Leticia on the banks of the Colombian Amazon, thousands of martins and parrots descend upon the tree-filled plaza in a cacophonous throng, the raucous ritual one of myriad ways the rainforest infiltrates the modern city of 50,000. Whenever possible, as the sun went down I would position myself on a bench to observe the whirling of life, smoking a cigar while the birds landed in the trees for the night - occasionally defecating on me as they passed.
One evening, two birds collided mid-air, plummeting to the cement pathway in front of me. Alive but dazed and unable to fly, they flopped about until each managed to find its way to the park’s grassy gardens. Saddened, I couldn’t bring myself to join the handful of people that briefly encircled the injured creatures before leaving them to their fate. The humming energy of the countless birds still flying no longer felt the same as I considered the fleeting nature of life and the pain that existed alongside the freedom of the birds’ flight. Ash fell from my cigar and the ember of tobacco burned lower as I drifted into a melancholy state.
Finally, I walked over to where the birds had been. The garden was deserted now, park lamps casting harsh shadows in the grass. For perhaps fifteen minutes I searched for the birds' small bodies until I came to the realization that they were gone. Apparently, at some point they had regained their senses and flown away. While I didn’t feel that any of the metaphors I had discerned in the collision were untrue, the birds’ recovery made my heart light once again. I placed my cigar stub where a mendicant might find it and headed off into the night.