They turn in a wind of watching eyes, then leap, cupping an updraft, and leave behind the crowd's quick heartbeat. Their feathers swallow sunlight, letting fall no drop of green or blue reflection. Children sit nearby transfixed or lie, chest to lawn and chin to palm, vigilant for motion. From the children's narrow vantage the water is a mirror, buoying swans on inverted clouds, upended trees and compatriots hanging headlong from the other shore. It remains, surviving the closing of eyes through a hundred generations, is by now a template for the eyes, yet still startles every glance.
French cathedrals lift like eagles from the ground.
But nothing is like this. Here there are no banquet halls, no ovens, beds, toilets, not even waiting rooms.