Hummingbirds
It is unlucky to capture hummingbirds
to mistake them for fireflies
condemning them to mason jars on the mantle piece
demanding their music at night.
You would sentence her thimble children
to an eternity of loneliness.
The wind depends on a jump start
from the hummingbird’s wingless flight
and it would remain confounded in the canyon,
a thoroughbred locked in the starting gate.
We have been warned of the possibility
of a partial eclipse of the sun
should her sparkling armor
remain too long in the shadows.
Old people propagate altars of delphiniums
and count on the hummingbird’s brief visits
to heal small fissures of their hearts.
In a dream, a hummingbird hitched herself
to my rings and flew to her wintering place,
the center of the sun. She said, I will protect
your daughter as she enters into the wilderness
of life, delight her
as the darkness presses in.
And I believe her, for in an aspen grove
in a circle of columbine,
hummingbirds found my daughter asleep in our tent.
They came and told her their stories,
their beaks clacking in the wind.
And when my daughter runs ahead of us
and seems eaten alive,
by the trees, by the cliffs, by the mountains,
I catch sightings of hummingbirds
orbiting her small head
like fireflies.
(Published in Matter Issue 14 Animal)
