COINCIDENCE

    Strange are the coincidences that frequent our lives:

   Such a beautiful March day dictated yard work during which I fell in the driveway, bruising myself. Later, as I finished thoroughly watering the lawn, I noticed a sparrow hawk struggling to release itself from entanglement in a mesh I was placing over our cherry tree in the hope of proving humans are smarter than robins.

    I tried to release it, lost my footing, and fell over backwards onto the wet grass, bruising myself more. The bird was so hopelessly tangled that I went into the house to get scissors and Joan came out to help. It was a long job. The bird seemed to know we were trying to help so stopped struggling to lay perfectly still while I cut all around it. Its legs look like twigs so I had to be extra careful not to cut them off in mistake for twigs as daylight was fading. Eventually we cut it loose after I sustained 2 cuts on my right hand from its claws - nothing deliberate on its part, just my own clumsiness.

    When I got into bed that night I was feeling bruised, sore, and tired. All of this plunged me in my dreams back exactly 69 years when I was desperately trying to get out of a flak-mangled, burning, plunging Halifax bomber which I did seconds before it plowed into an adjacent field. Again in my dream, bleeding and shaken, I felt the rain on my face as I looked up to breathe a prayer of thanks for my incredible good luck.

   I imagined the bird was having the same feelings.



georgesweanor@comcast.net
www.yeoldescribe.com