When returning to Albuquerque from Alamogordo, I found time to stop at the Bosque del Apache for a quick look around not knowing what I would see that time of year. It was my first visit. A ranger at the visitor center directed me to a location where I could see some sandhill cranes and snow geese. A short walk from the parking area led me to an elevated viewing platform that provided a splendid view of the marsh. A gaggle of snow geese stretching for a hundred yards or more was feeding peacefully, contentedly honking and murmuring. That all changed when a raptor landed in the middle of the gaggle, panicking the birds. In one enormous motion, they all took flight. The sound was deafening but the sight of thousands of birds in flight was like watching a ballet. They circled the marsh four or five time before they landed and resumed their peaceful feeding as if nothing had happened.
Some other photographers were there as well. A couple of them had cameras with rocket launchers for lenses. Great for shooting birds' nostrils. Sadly for them, they missed the dramatic vista of the flight of thousands of geese.
Reflections of a Poet
Flying
Flying (a response to David Douglas’s photograph entitled “Flight”)
(for David and Karen)
Ever since “man” first caught sight
of the sky and birds in their flight,
it has been his dream to
revel and cavort
in the sky with no visible means of support!
And so, he invented the airplane,
though at first some thought it quite insane,
but after a while, after he took flight,
there was little remaining of the original fright.
Now it’s to the moon and beyond!
Just where, I ask, will it all end?
Still, each new flight is like my first,
but to tell the truth, my friend,
I have never seen or never heard
of something more graceful than a bird
that takes off in the early morning light,
kindling within me the hope that I might
someday climb into the sky
and join the birds there on high,
instead of just watching them go by.
“Flying,” Copyright© 2018 by John D. Call