backyard encounter
Police choppers have been frequenting our neighborhood of late. Invading the air space directly above our alley, they are insistent in their tight, circling searches for some criminal element who they believe has fled, no doubt, into a crevice they’ll eventually see. Their searchlights illuminate our balcony and the church’s red brick wall behind us, flashing into the bedroom, disturbing the dogs.
A neighbor I have never seen before comes outside into his back courtyard while the big black bird goes on circling overhead on a recent evening. Over and over, the hum, fat chop of the blades, the whine of the engine Dopplering back and forth across the trench of blue night above us. We’d both like to know what the problem is…But he doesn’t look over at me, and I don’t call out or wave.
We both stand silently, enduring the invasion, wanting to share it but unable – me and the dogs in our tiny second-story “backyard,” he in his ivy-covered patio – until he turns and walks slowly up the stairs and back into his own helicopterless life.
shelly
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