On wings of song

Today, one of those sublimely beautiful epiphanies which come as a benison out of nowhere.

I was coming home on the last leg of a journey, the train rolling slowly through a sparsely wooded agricultural area of the coastal plain between sea to the west and low hills to the east. After a mainly wet day the sky was blue and the sun low, turning fields and trees to different blazes of gold. I was watching this lazily through the window when, from a field on my right, a pigeon lifted from a tree top.

For the best part of a kilometre, seemingly for ever, the pigeon kept perfect pace with my window. Gliding for much of the time, flicking its wings only occasionally to maintain height, it seemed to dip and rise on the spot. The land ceased to be a pleasantly rolling picturesque backdrop and became a flickering, glowing kaleidoscope of rapidly changing settings around the bird which had become the apparently still centre of the dancing world. I knew that transcendental feeling of exultant grace that comes only when least expected.

The kaleidoscope began to fill with scattered buildings, then more, became urban. The pigeon feathered its wings and dropped into a garden on the edge of the town and was snatched away backwards from sight. The world started up again, became its own solid continuous self.

At such times, though I can never share it, I know where religious faith comes from.