I took a trip to Cardinal Marsh to check out the ducks and some sandhill cranes, stalking the shore, lifted into the sky. Watching their transition from ground to air caused me to reflect on the seasonal transition and how often transitions, even for the graceful, contain an ungainly moment when The Before and The After tug equally.
Sandhill Cranes
Six sandhill cranes stood
near the slough –
just filled with flights of ducks
as winter lurches toward spring –
when wary, watching
each-as-one breaks a short run –
one,
two, three steps – their
thin legs reaching, wings
stroking, necks craning
upward toward the darkening sky.
Powerful wingtips sweep the ground. And
for three slow wingbeats, they are
suspended,
hanging in the cooling March air,
drawn back toward the Earth,
straining for the sky.
— Steve Peterson
You captured this moment perfectly — “as winter lurches toward spring,” as flight leaves the ground, as we/they are suspended between earth and sky, this and that, gravity and flight, pull and push.
Thank you, Mary Lee. I see this ungainly movement in the seasons, and also feel the tugs between The Before and (some kind of) After, which is unknown and being created now.