ruby-throated hummingbird

Beside the springhouse, the twittering zoom of a hummingbird’s courtship dive: from sunlight into cattail shadows and back. Tanager song.

A hummingbird grooms itself in the middle of a downpour while a phoebe plucks insects from the side of the dead elm, hovering in place.

Breezy, overcast, a spit of rain—these reports never seem complete without the weather. The buzz of a hummingbird. A common yellowthroat.

The sky is pretending to be blue, but I don’t buy it. A hummingbird may land on a dead branch, but that’s the only green it’s going to get.

Towhee, robin, catbird, great-crested flycatcher: birdsongs sound more vivid in the rain, like jazz solos rising over a surf of applause.

Glimpses of a tanager, a catbird, two goldfinches, and a hummingbird taking a shit. Each tree is still in possession of its own green.

A hummingbird checks me out before visiting the bergamot, and again afterwards. Then she zips down to the stream for the briefest of drinks.

A hummingbird does a quick circuit of the bergamot, then zips across the road to check out the limp orange tubes from yesterday’s daylilies.

A hummingbird lands on the upturned tip of a dead elm branch; the branch doesn’t move a hair. The first open peony lies on its side.

Foggy morning. A short-lived bright period brings a faint sound of traffic from I-99. I hear the hummingbird’s small motor in the garden.

Cloudy and cool. A tanager’s plucked string; no glimpse of scarlet. Where are they off to, the hummingbirds that keep zooming past my porch?

The bleeding-heart I bought yesterday, still in its pot, pulls in the first hummingbird of the year: shimmery red gorget, grotesque blooms.

Very cold, clear and still. My last dream before waking was of hummingbirds, and the trees at sunset shimmering with caterpillar tents.