Thursday, May 16, 2013

Flittering Flight of Fancy

The white winged moth
floundered and fluttered
in front of the chain link
fence. Flustered by the
fortifications preventing
it’s flight to the field
on the other side.

It flew up and back and
side to side, struggling to
figure how to pass through
the intertwined fenced mesh
of metal. Right and left it
flittered, down and half-way
up it flew, stopping short
of passing through.

I felt myself cheering this
moth on, silently encouraging,
strategizing from its perspective
on how to overcome this
flight path problem.

I felt if it would only land
on one of the chain link ties
and cross through one of the
holes and step forward it
could resume its flight.

I started to feel bad that
maybe this moth didn’t
have the cognitive ability
to problem solve in such a
way. I worried it might
flutter forever at this fence,
barred from the grassy
green on the other side.

Five minutes had passed and
the moth was still ricocheting back
and fro along the fence and I thought
it might be hopeless. The failing,
flailing insect doomed to die over
the rocky dryness of the train tracks.

A sharp breeze suddenly wafted
by and the moth was lifted high
aloft, up, up, up and up over
the fence and to the freedom of
the other side.

I cheered. A stadium of cheers
inside my head erupted. I looked
over to the field and saw the moth
now floating and flying over
the wild flowers in spring bloom.

Maybe everything will work
out after all, just not the way
it was planned.  

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