Emerald Enchantress

Summer Story
Mary Oliver

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.



I take innumerable photographs of garden birds, but only those of the tiny hummingbird move me to tears. I don't really know why, but I'm charmed, enchanted, completely captivated. This shimmering emerald flash leaves me just as Mary Oliver says, full of delight and shaking.

Dusky Fledged Wren, yesterday evening


Fledged Wrens, Day 2

Hummingbird Eyeliner...

For the Record,
This day came in overcast, warm and humid with showers predicted.