Hummingbird
for M______
She closes her eyes, slows her thrumming heart, wings draped
on the ridges of her bones. On her side, she rests against the blue-green shell
of a wing, curved along a scarlet breast. Stills her needled beak, talons curled
gripping nothing. She has come to this sleeping, crust of stamen on her long
and graceful tongue. A lick of hemlock, perhaps. Its pollen scattered
across her back. She, a thing of silent, startling colour. Appearing in the breath
of sky, amidst this wave of heat and grapevine. Trading the sweetest nectar
for this bitter treat. She made this the story’s beginning, yet,
could not sustain the hovering, hovering, hovering. Soundless, her burden
in a world of larger, screeching fowl. A frantic blur, tonight
she finally slows. Swallows her secret in the last licks of poison and presents
herself here, on my doorstep in the morning, perfect and still
as if a cat had mouthed her there.