Summer Story
When the hummingbird
sinks its face
into the trumpet vine,
into the funnels
of the blossoms
and the tongue
leaps out
and throbs,
I am scorched
to realize once again
how many small, available things
are in this world
that aren’t
pieces of gold
or power—-
that nobody owns
or could but even
for a hillside of money—-
that just float
in the world,
or drift over the fields,
or into the gardens,
and into the tents of the vines,
and now here I am
spending my time,
as the saying goes,
watching until the watching turns into feeling,
so that I feel I am myself
a small bird with a terrible hunger,
with a thin beak probing and dipping
and a heart that races so fast
it is only a heart beat ahead of breaking—-
and I am the hunger and the assuagement,
and also I am the leaves and the blossoms,
and, like them, I am full of delight, and shaking.
~Mary Oliver
My best shots of hummers~so far~were taken last March. The ones here were taken in July and I wasn’t as close nor was it as light out so they aren’t quite as good. Hence, they are now “vintage.” Textures by Kim Klassen (#1 and #3) and DistressedJewell.
