Garvey

Garvey
(644 words)


Garvey, a gangly awkward looking goose with a beak that slopes from his black forehead to the tip of his orange beak, stands tall and proud high atop the splintered lightning struck pine tree while he surveys near and far his watery domain.

The lone pine is the recent target of a spring storm and stands at the edge of a shallow, algae-covered lake where silver finned fish spring upward toward fluttering insects, and where frogs and crickets croak and chirp to the sound of lapping waves on the rocky beach of the lake.

Garvey’s domain ranges shore to shore; home to his family and friends; hundreds of black and gray geese floating atop the waves, dipping bills in the lapping waters, and paddling floppy footed against the currents.

The early rays of sunshine put a sparkle in Garvey’s eyes and shimmer on his smoothly oiled feathers. He preens his feathers. He picks and pulls. Garvey’s pride and majesty manifests through his puffed-up chest and perky tail feathers.

However, Garvey seeks a higher standing. He seeks a role in his life that is more exciting, exhilarating. He yearns for adventure. This clumsy looking fellow’s heart and soul dreams. He is the king of flight. He soars like the regal Bald Eagle.

“Here I am,” the goose dreams aloud, “perching high atop the world, where no goose has gone before me!” Stretching high on his royal perch, he imagines his wings strengthening and lengthening like an eagle. His large dish-shaped yellow bill becomes a sharp, curved and pointed beak. His flat webbed feet become talons.

“With this beak and these talons,” the goose thought with pride, “I can hunt and fish from the highest points in the sky!” Gentle round eyes that see his surroundings equally from both sides of his environment become two golden slits with pupils of onyx designed to see even the smallest prey. The golden slits could see for miles from his charred perch.

Feeling all the power of an eagle Garvey puffs out his chest with pride. The goose became a hunter, a searcher. He riffs and rolls with the wind. The treetops are his kingdom. The solitary hunter rules the skies.

However, the goose knows something is missing. His big heart began to feel empty. “An eagle,” thought the goose, “hunts and fishes alone.”

The proud gray goose began to miss his gaggle. He misses flying and feasting with his family; all the honking and chattering. He misses his family’s travels. His family flies all over the world flying north to south, then south to north in a V-shaped formation and points the direction of the seasons.

The one lone goose knows that within him is the heart of the Great Bald Eagle. He knows that he dreams a dream that can never be. He knows that he is a goose, a great gray Canadian goose. With his flock and family, he is never alone.

As Garvey stood atop his tall tree, his flock and family flew over him. He spread his wings and looked down from his towering pine. With his eagle’s heart pounding in his throat, he knew why a goose seldom lands in a tree. From the top of that tree, there was nowhere to go but down. There was no safe runway, no running room for the wind to catch his wings and lift him upward to the azure.

What Garvey did next shocks his goose friends even today. Garvey jumped. He jumped from that shattered treetop and dropped like a rock. He dropped and he flapped. He flapped with wings like pistons, up and down. An instant later, the wind caught beneath his wings, and raised him safely into the sky. His flock honked and flapped welcoming him with wide-open wings. Garvey’s heart gushed with happiness. He was never alone, again.