FLIGHT

(The inspiration for this vignette is "The Windhover" by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It is a poem of recognition of the power and beauty of God in nature.The poem is here --) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/173667

The cry startled her, where she stood on the cliff overlooking the wild ocean below. It was the falcon she had been seeing overhead the last few mornings on her walks. Its wild cries shook her, as they seemed to echo her own. She was inconsolable, and had taken to leaving the seaside cottage early, before anyone else was awake, so she could walk and bare her heart and weep.

The bird was beautiful as it swung and dipped and sailed through the air above her. She could almost feel his joy as he wheeled and banked and let the buoyant air lift him toward the sun. He was a prince of the air, riding high against the golden light of morning, the darling of the sun. She watched as it hovered overhead, holding steady against the wind off the ocean, and she wondered what it was watching, what it was stalking from the air.

She wished she could fly free as this creature of the air could. The power and beauty of the bird struck at her heart, and she wished she had that grace to soar above the boiling emotions that battered at her, like the waves beating on the rocks and the shore below. The bird swooped into action as she watched it, turning in a graceful glide like a skater on ice, the colors of the dawn a glorious backdrop for its performance.

She swallowed the tears that always sat behind her eyes, waiting to spill over. Beauty such as she had been witnessing these last few days reminded her of the clarity of the faith she seemed to have lost, as brilliant then as the sharpening light of morning around her now. That she foundered now on the hard places of despair and mistrust only heightened her pain, and made this bird's joy in living at once an affirmation of hope and a recognition of pain.

She turned away, back down toward the house, her face awash with the tears she could not hold back. These walks were her escape, her flight from the thoughts and feelings that plagued her nights and scarred her days. She needed to learn to hover, to ride the air above her troubles, to master the art of flight.