To be a Bird

    I was soaring.  Up in the clouds, then higher... higher...  This was good.  I dived.  I was screaming along at two hundred miles per hour, breakneck speed.  To me, the only limits were the ground that was rushing up to meet me and my own physical capabilities.  I pulled out of my dive just in time, careening off towards the nearby forest.  Every feather on me had a place, each one changing the way I flew.  Using the leftover speed from my dive, I shot like a feathery bullet into the trees.  I was always a second from death, flitting through the forest.  I had to be two steps ahead of myself, deciding in a fraction of a second which way to turn, which path to take.  If I didn't think ahead, I would be a very dead puddle of bird.  Insane joy mixed with giddiness and the need for speed fueled me.  Lots of practice didn't hurt, either.  Of course, being a bird and all, I was master of the skies, the rider of the winds.
    I used what little speed I had left over to go almost straight up, shrieking my adrenaline-rushed, fearless happiness as I threw myself into the wind.  I was suddenly rushing up, warm air beneath my wings, a cloud dead ahead.  I was so elated, so FREE.  One second passed, then two, and as I hit the third second of my ascension I was in the cloud.  I was suddenly very cold and wet.  All around me was white, white, white... then I dove down just enough to pull myself out of the cloud's soaking embrace. 
    I landed on a power line, shaking off the water and looking around.  Kids were playing on the sidewalk below, oblivious to the bedraggled bird perched above them, oblivious to my joy.  I spent some time sitting there, watching the children and letting the sun dry me with its warm gaze.  I almost felt sorry for them.  They had no idea what they were missing, those children.  They lived lives that were flat.  They would never see the world below them, see entire fields turn into postage stamps and cities become no more than gray blurs.  Thousands of lives were lived beneath me, every day the same, one day blending into the next and the next and the next until their unnatually long lives were over and they faded into history.  I may live a shorter life than most humans, but at least I will live a full life.  One where I am free.
    I realized in my musings that I was dry once again.  I flapped my wings experimentally, and, satisfied, I leapt from the wire.  As I rose into the welcoming sky once again, I felt the overwelming passion of flight and left everything behind me on that wire.  My mind was blank except for one powerful desire: to toss myself into the wind.  I rose up into the clouds, higher... then higher...
    This was good.
    I dived...