Hummingbirds

I’ve been trying my hand at more and more poetry this past year.  I have a very limited collection of poems in my keeping and, based on what I’m churning out, it’s pretty obvious that I’ve been hitting Wendell Berry and Mary Oliver pretty hard.  I’ve tried to write a few in the spirit of Langston Hughes (one of the others I’ve got in my collection) but those ones sound pretty silly so far.

Anyhow, I wrote this one a few weeks ago after sitting in our COLD winter backyard, watching some hummingbirds.  Then, last week, we were in Mexico and the boys and I saw a beautiful, bright hummingbird (pictured, if you can see it in the center of the photo) and it reminded me to return to the poem and keep working on it.

 

Hummingbirds

Today I saw five hummingbirds in our garden

Actually it may have been four

one doubling back for an encore

after seeing that she had brought me to my feet

 

I was still, in the quiet of the yard,

thinking of my beloveds, my work, my incurable disease,

my mountain of laundry

when suddenly I realized it was not quiet

at all

 

The birds, so many of them,

hummingbirds, sparrows, starlings of all stripes

were flitting and dropping and swooping

in front of me as if on a stage

chirruping and trilling and calling to their friends

 

How busy you all are, I thought,

and what a noisy bunch.

 

Then I was still, in the quiet of the yard

and listened.