Magic, Maybe

Have you ever seen a bird fall?  How could it be?  Sleeping, waking, flying, soaring, waiting for that perfect lift of wind - how do they calculate where it will take them? What do birds know of physics and calculus, what do they know of the length and arc of a curve as expressed in a breeze of wind, what do they know of gravity?  I think without words, and without numbers, they know it more intimately than Newton or Einstein. Maybe the world is ordered in numbers and solidified in the words we use to express them, but maybe birds know something else.

I watched a bird last night.  His wings spread wide, held aloft by invisible strings.  I wanted to touch, to feel, to experience it with him, but I could not sense even the breath of a breeze on my face.  It was magic, maybe, and I watched him, brown against the darkening sky.

I watched his wings, while up he went and down, over this way and that, turning, turning, turning, following an undefined, unrestrained path.  Never did I see his wings flap - not once - not at all. 

They say there is no real magic in this world, and maybe they are right. But I watched a bird fly last night. If Newton or Einstein had been with me, we could have written new equations - without using words or numbers at all.