In the rainy half-dark, a small white oval shifting and wobbling on the end of a branch: the breast of a hummingbird.
ruby-throated hummingbird
August 17, 2010
When I move my head, the hummingbird darts in for a closer look, leveling her long samurai bill at my neck, my ear, my glasses.
July 24, 2010
Three hummingbirds circle the blowsy remains of the bergamot at sunrise. One lands on a bare twig and grooms her breast feathers.
July 12, 2010
Cloudy and cool. Up to its snout in grass, a deer sneezes. The quiet squeaks of a hummingbird circling the beebalm.
May 17, 2010
A blue-gray gnatcatcher hoovering insects from the cherry leaves hovers almost like a hummingbird, I think, until the real thing zooms by.
May 6, 2010
I ponder the walking onion in my herb bed—how did it get here? A hummingbird lands on the tip of a branch and shakes water from its wings.
May 2, 2010
Tiger and spicebush swallowtails circle the white lilac. Leaves blow backwards. A ruby-throated hummingbird hovers a foot from my nose.
September 2, 2009
Ah, the inversion layers of autumn! A hummingbird materializes in front of me, her approach covered by the din, and studies my bright shirt.
August 15, 2009
A hummingbird defending her patch of soapwort buzzes an ovenbird, who walks back and forth on the cherry branches in his big pink feet.
August 12, 2009
A mosquito creeps across my shirt, an inchworm measures my jeans, and a hummingbird circles my head: this morning, I’m doomed to disappoint.
July 29, 2009
July 23, 2009
Come hummingbird and bring some glitter to this damp gray morning, buzz around the bergamot, pizzazz at the beebalm’s one bedraggled bloom.
July 17, 2009
June 25, 2009
Beside the springhouse, the twittering zoom of a hummingbird’s courtship dive: from sunlight into cattail shadows and back. Tanager song.