SURROUNDED BY MIRACLES

Late this sunny afternoon the wild wisteria pods began exploding like miraculous tiny cap guns, shooting their seeds hard and far into the undergrowth and beyond, while I was watching the barn swallows line their tails up on the telephone wire and scan the blue sky for insects.

Once in a while I too would see an insect up there; instantly one of the swallows would be off and headed in that direction, tracking the insect in a display of aerobatics that would put any 'top gun' to shame. Within seconds the swallow would be passing through the precise point where there was suddenly no insect. How do they do that? How do they anticipate the random meanderings of all the various winging insects and make their moves so ideally that, within the shortest distance and with the least expense of energy, they wind up right where dinner is?

It is miraculous thing to watch on a fine blue afternoon, especially while listening to life in the form of hard seeds pinging all around, filled with ancient knowledge of summer.