Overlooking the valley below,
the sun falling slow across the horizon.
Staring straight out into “the void”.
All my senses high-tended. Sight, smell, ground, air and sound. Every rustle in the grass, every whisper on the wind.
The subtle smells of Yarrow and Sage.
The distant salt lake shimmering like diamonds in the salty sand. The lark and chukkar are singing their evening sound.
What is real? What is the void? The Buddhist says, not to try and nail a peg in the sky! – but what is this peg, what is this sky, is there a way to shoot an arrow straight out, would it to stay in sky?
I feel as though I can grab it.
Even for just a secont.
My wing touches it, her color caresses it.
the fletching grasps at, trying to control it.
What freedom I could gain if only for a secont.
For only a moment the arrow hangs there.
So high into the sky.
What if I wrote it in a note.
Tied it tight, plucked the note, and let it fly.
Would it reach the creator,
would it peg the sky?
What am I doing up here? Why don’t I share this with someone; why do I hide it deep inside? Is there no one to listen? Not one to discuss the terrain, the whispers on the wind, and thoughts blowing in the mind.
Only silence answers, from the void, only silence calls as I send my thought to the wind.
Why am I hear I ask the breeze.
Why am I back at these front lines.
Is there no one else to patrol these lines.
So many of my friends had not returned,
yet the corporate man says either you;
or someone else until the end!
The battle between birds and man will never end, we will never win in this battle of rotten flesh and those who ride the winds.
There will always be something the human throws in the bin, there will always be a bone or something that gets in there in the end!
The sea of trash, the untreated waste, the “hu-manure” that’s a brine of yuck the birds munch and we can’t defend.
I feel I’ve lost my mission, even though I’ve pulled myself back up, time and time again. Fastened our boot straps, wrapped those plates over our shins. We’ve gone back to where the battle begins.
My brothers, friends, feathered warriors all tried to defend.
I stare out into that void.
That void I’d watched and launched a feathered friend. I remember the way their wings shimmer as they send.
A mile above the final resting place of the White Saker “Juno the Ice Queen” Who just the week before caught a cloud and rode it till the end.
Five thousand feet and five miles she surfed that wave.
Out of sight, miles away I thought she landed silently, softly in the safety of the deserts warmth. Somehow, she chose the highway instead of the natural world.
She waited poorly camafloged against the asphalt floor. The driver of the truck wracked up another 15 points for striking the Queen of the Dump.
Miles I’ve hiked to get to this point, years I’ve worked to get to this height.
“Guardians of the Garbage, Eco-warriors, Earth Protectors” I call our creed. A team of Falcons and Hawks, a stubborn young knight, a English Setter make up the “Shepards of the Sky”, SkyPatrol, the Falcons of Light
In all reality we are just a sad team of misfits who pretend to make a difference by patrolling the sky’s, keeping the wildlings from standing, sipping the contaminated waters, running off the sides. As the microbes and toxins seek to break the waste that is our poorly managed dump.
Haze and harass is our mission our plight.
To “Re-educate” the Ravens and Gulls, to teach them that this is a terrible place to get full and take flight
Now, Sitting high above this harsh desert land, this place drying of life, only sand.
I unfold my wing and take my final stand.
A leap of faith, a dash across the granite, freeing myself from this desert, pollution, and land… I pluck my arrow and send it, flying, high above the rock, gravel, rubbish, and sand!