Lying on a blanket under the sheltering canopy of fifty shades of green, I look out into the universe and it sees me. Feathery wisps of cloud traverse the blue expanse, the space between filled with avian activity. Almost too high to be seen, a lone sacred ibis whirls on an ever-upward spiral as it rides the thermals. A butterfly flutters closer to earth, thinking of nothing as it flits, only to be snatched up by a passing bird, too fleeting for identification.
Swallows wheel overhead, their curious flight a mixture of intense flapping and freewheeling, feasting on a scourge of mosquitoes to which there seems no end, and swifts swoop above them to catch the high flyers.
A raptor crosses my line of vision, wings tucked at its side, homing in on some hapless, unseen prey.
In the leaves of the shading tree, milkwood flies and bees buzz about their business, pollinating in their different ways.
I continue to lie on the blanket, flattened against the earth by gravity, spinning with the third rock from the sun on its endless journey through space, and think awhile about this gravity. All of these things are using energy to lift themselves away from the earth's surface and against the force of gravity. Their mass dictates how much energy they must use to lessen the force of gravity. So if there had been any miscalculation in the mass of humans and everything else on this planet, we would have all floated off right at the beginning.
I continue to lie on the blanket...
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