"The Road Less Traveled"

 

For a while, I thought it was the one I saw in front of me, stretching from left to right like a smile and crossing my entire range of vision. I observed only one car moving along the road the whole time I was there. It motored forward swiftly and steadily, its pace like that of a hawk approaching prey.

Then lights came on above me. I saw them reflected into lanes across the rolling sky. A large bird rose from the top of a telephone pole and traveled west along that overhead highway. It was just a trick of the eyes.

Yet knowing that it was a trick--does that really make a difference?

"Suet Cakes"

 

On her break, the woman went outside and sat on a bench near the tree with all the birdfeeders. She nibbled on her trail mix granola bar and sipped her coffee.

A woodpecker, perched neatly on the side of a cage feeder that held a suet cake, turned its head toward her. "Yeah, not the best, is it?" the woodpecker said. It pointed its beak downward, indicating her granola bar. "But, hey, at least that stuff gives us the energy we need to fly. I'd peck through a whole pile of animal fat if it meant I get to keep stretching out these gorgeous wings." It nipped at the suet cake a bit more before lighting on the air and flitting up to the highest branch of another nearby tree.

The woman went back into the building, returned to her computer desk, and sighed.