Party of Four

My tremor hand was holding a rock. The feel of a rock heated by the sun permeating my palm is ever so calming. My eyes were dancing  from the ground, as she teased and grabbed my dragging, leg to the mountains.  Scanning the path for treasured feathers. If anyone has read but a few of these scriches, you know how treasured gifted feathers are to me.


A shadow cast over my body, and looking up I saw the graceful flight, not even a flap of the wings. One was joined by two and then two were joined by a third. They circled their glide over me, dropping down so I could see them close.


  My heart is filled with gratitude for those feathers gifted to me.  But as I watched the three soar, just above me, how often I keep my eyes looking down, settling for the most immediate, the things I can grasp. And I could not help but think the greatest feather, the most lasting treasure, remains, always, forever in flight. The giver waits, whole and in flight. Somehow, at that moment, with a dragging leg, the three were joined by a fourth.


“You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.” 
― John O'Donohue