He looked up from the mystery he
was reading wherein the president
was being informed that his vice-
presidential choice had been born
in Mexico, just a few miles from the
US border but forever away from
confirmation by the senate. Need-
less to say, the fictional president
felt like a man standing on one leg
on a high-wire stretched across the
Grand Canyon. The man, listening
to the rain tap the new transparent,
polycarbonate roof on the cedar front
porch looked up between two wind
chimes fluttering in the breeze, making
beautiful music and saw a bird perched
high up on an electric wire balancing
itself quite nicely on one leg. The bird
looked up into the rain, shook the water
from its feathers and flew gracefully
down into a shrub perhaps to escape the
rain. The man had read that the Tao Te
Ching states that it is good to keep two
feet planted squarely on the ground.
Straddling a high-wire on one leg in the
rain is only good for the birds, the man
thought, but we keep pressing our luck.