Sitting in a weathered chair
beneath a clear blue mountain sky
I find myself enthralled by hawk upon the wind.
My soul is drinking in his graceful dance.
No beating wings. No needless work.
And yet he rises up to higher heights.
Invisible and unseen forces guide his fluid flight.
Amidst his lack of power to make the breezes blow
the hawk has learned the power of letting go.

I’ve often worked extremely hard to get from here to there.
Watching the hawk I wonder if
perhaps I should’ve waited for a wind.
Looking back I’d say my destination wasn’t wrong
but impatience worked its work and got the best of me.
I furiously flapped my wings and tried to move along
but unwillingness to wait for wind gave birth to weariness.
The only thing my flapping satisfied?
A gnawing need for me to feel
at least I wasn’t someone standing still.

It seems the hawk thinks stillness
is a proper plan as I watch an updraft carry him
a hundred feet above where he had been
making lazy circles as he slowly rises up.
His vantage point improved by nothing more
than outstretched wings and innate sense of
the moment he should stretch them.
The wind provided lift.
The hawk enjoyed the ride
carried like a ship on morning tide.

I sense a breeze is taking me to places I’ve not been,
to heights I could not go by flapping puny wings.
I sense an energy that isn’t mine;
a dance I’ve finally joined where all I do is rest
and let the wind do that which only wind does best.
The age-old invitation beckons, “Come.”
An easy yoke, a burden light,
rewards for leaning into holy wind.
The invitation to the weary soul
is all about the choice of letting go.

© Danny Mullins  July 2018

The prayer deck I was privileged to use on a hilltop outside Pagosa Springs, Colorado. As I was sitting here one afternoon I watched the “hawk in the wind.”