Kamikaze Duck

Driving into town with Chickzilla not too long ago, I was stopped midsentence by the sight of a mallard duck barreling across the sky. His green head glint in the sun and his wings flapped furiously to propel his fat little body through all that sunny blue to cross the highway and get to the ocean. He did not have the grace of the soaring red shouldered and redtailed hawks that line the highway, nor the spry lithness of all the sparrows, starlings, or warblers. No majesty, like the owl, or haunting poetry, like the crows. Just pure joy at that estatic careening toward the ocean- I could almost hear him yelling "Yahoo! Look at me! Comin in for a landing!"

I realized, as I watched him, that I will never be a hawk. In this life, I am a duck. And in that moment, there was nothing more beautiful than that little green head and flapping wings working for all they were worth to make it to that place where the water crashes into white and washes up on shore.