“When the hummingbird
sinks its face
into the trumpet vine,
and 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 buy even
for a hillside of money--
that just
float about 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 assuagement,
and also I am the leaves and the blossoms,
and, like them, I am full of delight and shaking.”
