Running: Gust of wind lifts me up and shoves my whole body from behind. Legs going as fast as they can, now cover more length with each stride. Feet struggle to find ground to push on. I touch down and coast to a safe landing. My big friend the wind disappears ahead of me.

Swimming: my big friend the ocean lifts me up. Laughing, gasping for air, I tumble. I get spit out on the sand. Laughing too, he rises up and falls onto me again.

Sleeping, I surf the darkness on my bed all night. Waking, it all comes back to me. I step off my board to swim in my big friend the day.

Today at the parking lot....windy:

Suddenly, a confusing black thing at the tree tops, too fast to see. Tumbling, blown sideways and down by the wind. Black mass of feathers, stumbles, falls dangerously, and quickly flies back up and away.

As I watch it fly away, I see it all again in my mind. Tumbling through the air sideways. I see it now, a crow, now stopped and falling, upside down, changing shapes. Reaching, arching to see, flaying at the air. I see its eye for a second, its urgent expression. And in an instant curling to a ball until it faces the wind, now opening muscular feather arms. Finally safe, flying, it looks like a bird again and joins the crow I am watching fly away. Standing there, I don't know what to do next.

Just a few seconds that I relive again and again.

Monday. The best thing that happened today was yesterday. I spent the whole day there. This morning was so bright I had to put on sunglasses to work at my desk. The afternoon went on forever.

Sunday was sunny too. Long aimless afternoon bike ride. I stopped to talk to a midwest trucker unloading cars for a dealership. I felt good there on the side of the road. Lonely thing to be doing on a Sunday, far from home, us both. I asked how is the country? Looked at me for a second, thinking. Said, "People needing someone to talk to. People feeling bad." I rode around looking in the yards of a thousand houses. I had a donut and a glass of water from McDonalds. Sitting on the curb in the winter sun, eating. I felt good.

I went back there so often in my mind today that I decided to go there again on my bike too. I had fries this time. I felt good again as I watched traffic. Tomorrow supposed to be sunny too.

Today I saw some birds, not small, up higher than average, in a grey sky, windy. I have been up there. Just floating at first to watch. Then to chance a try with them, to feel what it is like to do that and to try to fit in unnoticed as one. I think it is something anyone can do.

Once a year in late summer some large white birds come to some dead trees in a swamp by my road. People gather. The people and the birds watch each other, each perched quietly together with their kind.

Their cry is not the song you might expect of a large white bird. I think of it the sound a human might make when trying to squawk.

When these white birds fly it is not the graceful soaring you might expect of a large white bird. It looks more like a newspaper being blown among the tops of the skyscrapers of windy city. Tumbling, folding and spreading, floating down and then borne high up suddenly by a draft.

There are, of course, also near me the common small birds that zip suicidally through the briar's. One can see how a large bird can float, borne up by large buoyant wings, rowing the sky. But these little birds, fat with little wings that hardly seem to do a thing for them, they are too fast for my eye and I can't see how they stay up.

These small birds can hide from the wind storm. What can the large birds who cannot fit in a nook do? Take their chances in the air instead. And being in it, feel it's air still as the eye of a cyclone and instead watch the earth turn safely beneath. And when it stops turning, come down in a place different of smell, appearance and sound, lacking the foods they require. Sea birds blown far inland. Or worse, land birds blown far out to sea.

What must it be like? Words perhaps being insufficient, nature favors them and us with song.