if you wanna be a bird ...

A crow flies heavily through the blue evening air then makes a graceful swoop up onto the finial of the steeple. It looks like a small black flag as it surveys its domain: lord or lady of all it commands. I recall how when I was a child I wanted to be a bird. Then a jet pilot. Later, at the Masterton Air Show, the thundercrash of Vampire jets breaking the sound barrier so terrified me I gave up the ambition on the spot. I would be an archaeologist instead ... until I realised that they are more likely to spend decades squaring out ground and sifting sand than they are to uncover a gold Mask of Agamemnon or similar. That left me with writing. I still want to be a writer. And a bird ... now I remember I missed that crow leaving its perch on the gothic spire though I did see it flying away through the Prussian blue sky. A spotted Malaysian dove moves from the gum tree onto the tiled roof of the next door building and sits there, making its lovely, lost sound: kor kor kor-korrr, kor kor kor-korrr ... Sunlight on red clay, the stillness of morning, the pink breast below the black and white speckles on the neck, an answering call from somewhere behind us. A honey bee stumbles over the pebbles on the deck then blurs its wings and goes, leaving me earthbound, bound to the earth, dreaming still, as when a child, of flight.