As I stand before the screen door,
Coffee in hand, you send forth your hum
Let me know you are coming. And I search
But you are quick little one.
Your strong wings pumping too fast for my dark unhurried
eyes.
Yet you do not wish to evade me.
In this dream the malice of man and beast cannot touch us,
It is as if Adam never broke our bond
His disobedient tongue tastes no sweet fruit in this place.
You do not fear my defiant nature, which lead you into a
cursed land.
Instead you come boldly, beak to nose
And bid me open this door and remove that which separates
us.
You speak to me with black eyes and soft vibrant tones
“May I come in, be with you? Exist with you? Rest with you?
May I lay soft in your un-callused palm melting into its
lifeline
As fresh whipped cream into a mug of cocoa,
Making it richer with thick buttery goodness?
But first may I slow my wing so that you may see me? Not
simply my
Magenta breast contrasted from the cool aquatic green, but
watch me fly so slow
That the hum of my flight is stilled and silent for this
sacred moment.
May incense burn and fill our nostrils so that no sense goes
unquenched
For we will be swaddled in the fullness of this
A moment of congruence.
For we are no longer separate species
But one genus, a creation in accord
Stopping to experience what we were meant to be.”
What can my response be? I need not communicate in words
with you
My pet and friend. How then can one correspond with the hummingbird
But to match the pitch of her wing and sing together
Joining our voices in hymns composed before music was,
The vibration of her waves touching my skin and raising its
bumps as a chill after a warm bath?
Was there ever such oneness? It is as if I know what it is
to be God!
We two persons, of one essence inside one another
Spirits dissolving into one another.
Is this what marriage is? For you are sun, burning the shadow
of my darkened soul.
You are boys with sticks in a forest, saving the world from
their own imaginations.
You are a mansion with many rooms, each with a name waiting
to be introduced.
You are espresso, filling my blood with the electric that
makes my veins blue.
You are a lemon, puckering my lip cleansing my mouth with its
acid.
May I drink the nectar of your mouth like a tall glass of
sweet tea from the south?
You may drink life from the place nearest to my heart and my
fingers will hold you as a mother’s arms
Nurture her child. For it is as if you came out of me.
Enter back in, that I may carry you with me
Even in my waking. Stay hummingbird.
I will leave you the hairs from my brush and the twigs from
our fallen birch tree
That you may weave together a nest in my liver.
I will find you a male and swallow him whole
So that you two may reproduce and raise your family in the
deepest parts of my belly.
I will fast for a week, so that the hollow arches of my
stomach
Will be a cathedral for your wedding.
Fill the church with orchids,
But your bouquet, build that from lilies so that when I
catch it
I will remember that my husband has promised me a ring on
the day of His rising.
He is the handsome one with the strong chin
Who breathed out your feathers.
I will sit with my back against his chest, his roots
stretching beneath me
And his budding cherry blossomed branches above me. I will
carry you there,
So that his tree grows round us,
For birds live in trees, and I want you to be at home in me,
and we in him.
Can I never wake from this utopia?
Ah but I must, so that tonight I might meet an elephant on
the patio
Who drinks lakes, and showers us with his trunk, and lets us
sleep
Warm under his ears for blankets.
But do not worry mother, sister, daughter, friend,
I promise to take you with me as our Cherry tree walks with
us the long road back to our garden home.
