by Jane Myers

Created on: May 28, 2009

NIGHT FLIGHTS

Out of body experiences, I've had one or two. There is usually a brief forewarning as I am drifting off to sleep, to inform me of an impending flight, audible only to me. Listen - can you hear the drums tap-tap-tapping on the tom-toms, I hear a battle cry and the sound of the drums taps tightly and then echoes in deep, rythmic baritones as if coming from the bottom of a vast canyon, but I am aware that it is in my mind. It alerts me to spirits gathering to take night flight. Last night I saw Shenandoah Valley from a birds-eyeview I kept having to flap my arms like wings so that I could keep my feet up off the ground and suddenly the nudge from the wind enables me to take full flight. Dropping down into the valley I am soring in and out of wooded thickets. then to the meadow where I find the sweet scent of the honeysuckle vine. Treading air like water. I wait until hummingbirds come to show me how easy it really is - to fly and maintain elevation. "Catch a wind tunnel or a feathery cloud on a blistery day and you will go even higher than before. Just hang on to what you've got. Once you have lifted off just don't panic because it seems foreign to you - we are here to support you and teach you everything we know from the birds to the bees and beyond." Hummingbirds represent love to me so either I find them or they find me, somehow quite naturally. Busy wings protect me as their love encircles and I swoon. This is better than anything I have ever felt in my life. I am included and yet at the same time free -no threats, no fights, no problems at all when I take flight at night. I sing a song and dance a jig - then skip lightly across the lakes and ponds like a stone. There I find a place I never want to leave. Suddenly, life calls me back. Come home, lost one - tap, tap, tap. The drums call me home to start another dreary day, with rain pounding down on my tin roof as I cry out a warrior yell, then tap, tap, tap-it is my pencil on my desk. I become mesmerized by a heart with an arrow going through it and I see the initials had been carved into the wood by two lovers. Still, Iam bored because I want to go back to where I was with birds and bees galore. I long for Shenandoah Valley and the peace found there. It is beyond compare. "Another time" I say to myself, "I will be allowed to fly with hummingbirds in honeysuckle vines - until then won't you sit right here with me beneath the weaping willow tree?

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