True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings

A few days ago I was standing like a moon-struck sheep, gazing up at the graceful, darting little birds around the front of the main building, wondering if they were swallows, or martins, or swifts. I can never quite believe that anything is really a swallow, because they always turn out not to have been.

Today the sky was as blue as if it couldn't imagine being anything else, and the campus was very quiet, because today was a holiday (I am saving up my days off for when people visit, hence was working). And when I came out of the entrance door, there was a swallow, sitting on a wall. I didn't think swallows did anything as mundance as sitting on walls. But there it was, and as I walked it flew away in front of me, glossy blue, the flash of a paler belly and a bright red throat, streamlined and forked-tailed.

It was perfect, swallows are perfect, and I have seen one.

And for balance, I have also seen another cockroach in my kitchen. Bah.

But the cockroaches of this world do not dim the swallows. Not today, anyway.