The Homecoming

he lovely nightingale was flying home this year and yet he didn’t see as many planes as usual. No one was around. The towns and cities and even countries he saw were covered by a blanket of deathly silence. And he wondered – had humans really stopped? They didn’t usually go home. Didn’t migrate. Nor stop doing. Although some called them human beings, in his experience they rarely had time to be.

As he went further northwards, closer and closer to home, the same thing was true everywhere. He didn’t see the random acts of kindness or people grappling with video calls. He was too high in the sky. What he saw was the cleaner air and the other animals running free in cities. He saw the empty motorways and the empty streets and the empty shops. Not a soul was bothering the trees. No one cutting them down to build on top of them. He saw a few people in uniforms (an army uniform he thought) but that was the only army he saw. Normally there would be a war somewhere and yet the only ‘army’ he saw was peaceful. He came closer and closer to home, thinking all the while, until he saw his family and flew to join them warbling a happy tune. And all his other cares flew away on the breeze and the song of the nightingales forced out the earlier, eerie silence.

Dawn came the next day and the sun rose higher and higher like a monarch nearing

Tthe peak of her career. And through the day, the sun reigned, in her beautiful crown, with her rays making jewels of all they met. The fledglings, her loyal subjects, played in their playground beneath her benevolent gaze. Round and round the fallen fence, carefree and happy, and there was no one there to scare them away.

And the nightingale looked at them and then looked at the large nests of the humans. He saw the sadness of the humans and happiness of the fledglings and saw that they were in direct contrast. The fledglings used to be wary and kept close to the nest, and now it was the humans’ turn.

TURMOIL AND LOSS

And yet even he, the most far-sighted of nightingales, did not see the turmoil inside the hearts of so many innocent humans, and even if he had, he might not have understood why. He thought the humans should be happy to step off the treadmill they called life. The free and happy nightingale was blissfully ignorant of all those who had the opposite of his rest.

All those people who were very sad inside those nests that were so big yet hadn’t protected their hearts from loss.

Outside, the bird felt secure singing without danger, deep into dusk. The bird was at home. While idly perching on a branch he thought to himself: isn’t it funny that when humans are at home, the birds are at their safest?

He saw the cleaner air and the other animals running free in the cities. He saw the empty streets and shops.