Somewhere in the far north of the country, a monsoon whips and drenches the land. Here, on a beach one thousand kilometres south, the monsoon’s tail lashes sand and sea and sky. During a lull between rain dumps I take my chances and run across the hard-whipped sand. I have the beach to myself. Clouds lower and threaten. The air is warm and wet.

Something draws my gaze upward, and there – there! – a shape is held in suspension. The shape moves ever so slightly, moves sideways in the air. Closer now, I make out a white undersurface, and as the shape leans a fraction, a silver-grey shows itself. My legs find speed and power, drawn in long-forgotten fluency, towards this bird, this vision. I realise I’m gazing up at a sea eagle.

The sight is a glory. I feel a transport of joy. No sound but wind and the waves crashing, driven by the wind, the wind that this bird defies. He defies the roaring wind, and rides with such ease. Suddenly, he swings, gliding now, wind-powered, and is gone. I thrill to the mastery of the thing. “Mastery” – the word comes to me from The Windhover, that poem of Hopkins that must have hovered above my thought for two score of years.

In phrase after phrase Hopkins captures my feeling:

I caught this morning morning’s minion…

My heart in hiding, stirred for a bird…

This uplift in my spirit stays with me all day.

Simply, a bird, a beach, a wind; simple the recipe for exultation, for thanksgiving, for preservation.