Blue Feather

I found this feather. It's small and indigo blue. I want to stick it in my hair like a Comanche, but my dad impressed on me at a young age that birds are dirty, just like the saying. Birds have mites, he said. You don't want mites living in your hair, do you? Go wash your hands.

My feather has a speck, a tiny white thing. I suspect mites are invisible to the naked eye but I squint at it warily.

The feather is shaped like an oar, dyed from continually dipping in waves of blue. The bird it belonged to sailed the sky. Maybe that's why I see an oar and a mast, its sails partly furled.

If I were a mite--no, if I were as small as a mite I'd cling to this feather and let the wind carry my vessel away. If it blew west I would ride over plains, over new wheat billowing wave after wave; if east, straight to the sea.

I'd find a shell with a hole in which to place the feather, and with a bit of sea glass for a rudder, I'd push off for the blue unknown, that distant indigo line, the boundary of the world.

I'm not mite-sized, the feather can't transport me anywhere; I can't even wear it in my hair. I should wash my hands, but instead I stand rolling the feather between my forefinger and thumb, watching it flash electrically blue as light collects on its razor fine edge.

This feather doesn't belong to the brown and green earth. It is a piece of sky, a knife used to cut the air.

I hold the feather high then sweep it in a downward arc. Space whistles over and around its perfect symmetry. It cuts through the haze, that blur obscuring my sight and I see a clean line curling down like paper, exposing a sliver of brilliant light behind the sky.

I ease through the opening and step onto a plateau where I stand with my toes touching the edge of the world, my head thrown back toward the sun's Sun. The softest wind that ever blew rifles the feather in my hand.