Sky is Home

She kneels upon the earth, after swooping, falling, her legs spread to brace herself, balancing, opening her feminine core to the energy of the Divine Mother.
A creature of the air that transcends and integrates all the elements into One as she kneels to kiss the earth.
She has to land periodically, she cannot remain upon wing forever, and so she is grateful to earth for offering her rest and peace, a place upon which she can pause, wonder at her fellow/sister creatures who crawl and walk and swim and transform. 
Her sturdy thighs are thickly muscled, surprising how they resemble a much larger being than the twig-like lower legs of air-filled bone easily lifted and tucked inside her body when air and space call her home. 
Home for her is not the nest where she temporarily raises her young, and home is not the earth she kneels upon, precious though it may be.
Home is not a circle, a burdensome line holding her within its fragile shell.
She was born that way, cramped tightly into a hard shell she pressed against, expanding until it cracked...first a bit, then a tiny hole poked through by her sharp little beak and she tilted her head as much as possible though it was hard to do in that tiny space of before-birth, and she held one eye near the hole and saw the entire world and--CRACK!--she broke free from her shell of protection after she saw the world that awaited her with all its colors and textures and beckoning wide open spaces! 
Her body damp, her feathers barely there, wet and clinging, she fell forth into the dry crackling nest with the thin layer of down, and immediately felt her skin begin to dry from the air that called to her, tickling, enticing, telling her stories of the sights she would soon see on her own.
For her nest is not home, only a place to rest and become a real being she had only dreamed about.
She tipped back her head on the thin scrap of skin called a neck and opened her mouth and sounded out, sending her voice out into the world upon the breeze and heard an answering call.
Quick as the wind blows, she ate and grew and took such joy in the feathers that would soon lift her up to home where she would never be confined again. 
Where she could soar and see and live fully free.
And yet.
She did not forget. 
So in gratitude she returns to the earth to kiss her grounding where she shall go when death steps in and calls her soul to return for a new beginning. 
Earth where her food comes from.
Earth that holds the water to bathe in and soothe a parched throat.
Earth that offers her a never-ending visual extravaganza of ever-changing scenery and seasons. 
She glides through a thick gray cloud and giggles with the momentary hide-n-seek of the elementals.
Then catches a current and bobs up and down, riding it like the dolphins below play upon the ocean waves. 
They talk and share and she knows there is less difference than one might think between her blue and theirs...the waters of the seas and the currents of the breeze.
Patterns and currents and flows and eddies.
One so light and the other so heavy, yet she sometimes gets to play with both when the mist is on the mountain, and the world she sees becomes a subtle mirage of the normal one, the trees try to disappear as if to play her game of hide-n-seek even though they are rooted to earth. 
Then she gets to seek her special resting place for it is now disguised and not easily seen from her flights on high, and they play in this world where home is different for all of them.
Yet earth is precious, nurturing, nourishing, welcoming, harboring, and transformative in the end.
And so she kneels to kiss the earth.
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This was a visual writing prompt from my We'Moon 2011 iPad app (image above).