The thing about feathers is that, well, they’re good imagery, aren’t they? They always have been. Holiness, protection, guidance, courage, wisdom. Power. Hope.
Freedom. Always, freedom.
We dream of flying. Always have, right? To lift our feet from the ground and not fall back down?
When the Wright brothers took flight that first time, do you think the fear or the hope took precedence? Do you think they were screaming?
I would have been laughing, I think. Hysterical, maybe, but laughing all the same. Imagine it; to be the first since Icarus and Daedalus to win against gravity, even if only for a moment or so.
I imagine it must have been exhilarating. Terrifying for sure, absolutely. But...
Just imagine.
Imagine, then, if Icarus had not broken his wings. If he had listened to his father and survived. How different would the world be if we could simple strap wings to our arms and take flight? How different would it be if da Vinci’s flying machines had got off the ground, all those centuries ago?
A strange kind of freedom, that the birds have. To fly because they must, because it is how they are built.
I would take because I must. I would hope for because I can.
Were I feather-fingered and hollow-boned, I don’t know that I would ever land. Why come back to earth, when there is so much more to see? I would be swift-like, landing only to help others grow and take flight themselves.
The thing about feathers is that they feel like a promise, and the thing about promises is that each one contains a story. The ravens in the tower have theirs clipped because of a story, because their keepers do not want to test the bonds of our superstition.
And stories, mostly, they give us hope. Each one a feather in the wings that will raise us above where we live, what we see. Each one gives us a snapshot of a life that might have been ours. Each one gives us a chance at understanding someone who isn’t like us.
It is not about longing. Well, it is a little bit about longing. We build pining into those pinions and hope no one will notice.
I think this one, this one will be different. I will not build a desperate longing into these words. A fruitless hope. My longing is mixed into the ink that makes these words, that fills my pens, that stains my hands.
And so I gather feather-fanned stories. We create them and share them by word by song by brush by pencil by pixel and in every heartbeat that creates a brighter world.
It could be so much brighter, my love. These wings would encircle the world, and I long I want I wish I hope –
I
Hope
That these feathers we create, these remiges and rectrices, coverts and semiplumes, through to the down and the filoplume and the bristle, will be what’s left of us at the end. I want these feathers to be winging into the future, beyond where we might stop and another start.
That they will be used to say 'this is what they were'; that they will be used to say 'they existed. This was real.'
I would not mind being only a story, for there is nothing only about a story that survives. I hope only that it is a good one, that it becomes what someone, someday, will need to keep going.
The thing about feathers is this: they’re a really good metaphor for so many things.
And hope, after all, is the thing with feathers.