GAYLA M. MILLS
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Soaring
Perspectives Magazine (Sept 2017)
by gayla mills

Picture

Mom told me I’m four dimensional. There are three axes, she explained when I was a mere tweet, but we float on the fourth. I liked the idea of floating, especially when I was snuggled close to her and my sibs, warm.

Then one day I felt ready, confident and eager. I spread my arms, stretched, and I was off, traversing the fourth dimension on the southeastern wind current that alternated between 40 and 60 degrees in slope. Whoo, it picked me up higher and I found myself flushed with boundless nowness. The earthly things dropped as the scents, colors, richness of the air drew me forward. Effortlessly, I closed my eyes for a moment so I could better sense the pieces of molecules of particles of world that pressed in around me, as I rushed through them, floating, soaring. So this was the fourth dimension she had spoken of.

Feeling giddy with its newness, I abruptly flipped my feathers and headed straight down toward the trees. I could feel the tips roughed up by the air as I used one force against another to plunge swiftly. Then feeling mischievous, I robbed gravity of its reward and turned 37 degrees on the western axis, 110 on the northern, and 52 on the fourth. With what I must say was an elegant reversal, I drew up to the scented branch covered with soft spines and grabbed hold. Not bad for a first run, I thought.

Unable to bear my new existence silently, I felt my full throat. I let loose, crying out in the gleenal scale that I had heard in late evening. This, of course, is the scale reserved for intense feeling, and it seemed fitting. I was pleased to be joined by my clitchmates, who responded with the sleelie scale of pride. They had witnessed my journey in the fourth dimension and celebrated it with me. I knew with a certainty born from my success that the possibilities to soar would always be.

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  • Home
  • Book
    • Purchase
  • Essays & Features
    • On Music >
      • All Steamed Up
      • Music Under a Tennessee Moon
      • A Future Imagined
      • Nashville Lights
      • Finding the Right Key
      • Practice
      • 12 Reasons Live Music
    • On Family >
      • Opening a Closed Book
      • Powers of Two
      • A Father's Spring
      • The Last Day
    • On Home >
      • Brick by Brick
      • Best not to Know
      • The Bouquet
    • On Mortality >
      • Dead Bodies
      • Being Whole
      • Shaken Ground
    • On Living Fully >
      • Everything's in Color
      • Becoming Human
      • The Immortal Years
      • The Cost of Jury Duty
      • Broken Bones
  • Events
    • Past Events
  • Media
  • Contact