- Incredulous Essay on Hummingbirds
Whirr of spokes, little splashof tachycardia—everything about them is too vivid
to believe,as if they were illustrations somehowlifted from the page,
even their obvious hoveringa kind of concealment, the wingsinvisibly swift.
Some weigh less than a penny, little morethan my first thoughtwhen I see one—this
can live?
________
Infallibly the surpriseof their first droning in the garden,
all dangerof frost past,
freezes me (the stingof a bee that loud would kill
instantly).
White blooms are flame enoughto draw them, seeing what they see
of ultraviolet colors, [End Page 131] to us, mere rumors.
________
The whirling turbineof the wings, the heart strobinga thousand times a minute—
Time must ragein them. If I touched one,
immediately
my hair would silver, and my bonesgray.
Naturally, their torpor,as it's called, is in proportionsteep and dark, a 90 percentdrop in metabolismthat an insomniac could envymore than flight,
even the tiny lightin their headsoffthat they would need to dream.
________
Busy winds, tiny flywheels loosedfrom day's machine—
no way, from the meresipping of nectar, could they build
feather and speed and tendon,yet seeing them snap up
insects when they thinkno one's looking [End Page 132]
is faintly a letdown. I wantedsweetness to be that strong.
________
It isn't
humming, is it?—the note changingmore slowly than the weather.
We'd have to listenall summer, and to all of them at once,
to hear the whole song,its secrets hiddenright there in the open
from us, always too lightly turningto our smaller, quicker tasks,
as if anything at all could be an ending. [End Page 133]
James Richardson's previous collections of poems and aphorisms include During (2016); By the Numbers (2010), a National Book Award finalist; Interglacial: New and Selected Poems and Aphorisms (2004), a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays (2001), all published by Copper Canyon Press. For Now will be published in 2020.