A Moment with Birds

Life has not been experiencd until you are on your surfboard out beyond the break, floating amilessly in the open ocean through a school of macrals. Sea birds all around you, flying above you, dropping poo around and even sometimes on you. One bird dives and re-emerges from below the surface of the water with a shinny fish it its mouth, then the next one dives and re-emerges with another fish, it keeps happening, all around you. You can hear the air rushing past the birds feathers as it dive bombs from its place high above. Every time one emerges the next one falls, and every time that one emerges a sprinkling of the ocean's salt water christens your already drenched body with little specks of glistening wonder rolling off of one species and hitting you directly, at times passing life andthe meaning and reason for life on to you. The birds are all around you, diving and catching, splashing and singing to one another out of pure joy. And as the birds fly away with a fish in their mouth sprinkling salt water on to you, you realize that there is no way to catch these creatures, they are up in the air, high above you, closer to the divine than we can ever be. Looking down on us constantly, seeing our world and creating epiphanies for us. Birds are the connection to heaven, the connection to epiphaphanic moments, the connection to what life is--the freedom to sing out of joy and feel from experience. And after you have drifted with the school and been part of the action, maybe even brushed by a wing, the birds leave you, at last to be with yourself, your thoughts, your imagination, and simply to swim with the fish.

~L.