Absorbing Resilience ~ a childs flight

".....Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.....an unlimited idea of freedom."  ~ RICHARD BACH (yes, the old 1970 J.L. Seagull)

"The moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest..." ~ RALPH WALDO EMERSON (c. 1870)

A seagull child calls and flies, high on the dune cliffs, where homes more expansive than mine hug the shifting sand and scrub pines - bay windows set towards the sunset. A young girl dances on a deck, waves, flaps and skips ~ calling in an astonishing voice to a small flock of circling gulls.

Gulls swoop, dip, dive and elegantly hold to the air currents, closely calling and wheeling with the child on the cliffside. Far from their usual ocean beach habitat, entranced by this young strangers voice, resounding as their own, perhaps communicating a kinship, a love, a longing, even wonder...the birds slow their normally erratic swift flight, hover and flow with a kind of calm beauty.

I stop my beach walk, directing my gaze to the high perch of this creative one. I turn my back on the rolling waves, the kites, the dogs, the tourists on this unusually busy winter Sunday ~ 
I am entranced with the slow elegance of the seagulls, as they loop over and around the childs head. They are performing for her, and she for them! Count them: six white winged, lazy dancing birds - normally so arrogant, so brazen in their strutting, diving perpetual search for food. Yet here, I witness a beauty, and hold close a new appreciation.

The child calls, sings, skips rope down the length of her deck....she calls with arms raised as if to launch upwards in flight. The gulls circle, soar, float ~ wondering.......

Absorbing resilience, I watch until the child disappears into the home and the gulls at long last return to wandering. I will not forget.