A hummingbird pauses by the window

A poem from the Poem Farm

Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash

A hummingbird pauses by the window

where I sit writing   I swear 
it’s my friend Norma flitting around 
two days after her memorial 
a reminder to step 

into the morning glory’s purple gaze
to welcome the ancient oak in the dog park
that offers me a branch 
low enough to climb up and sit on

That night the full moon hanging low in the sky
over the city, over the bay, over the town,
guiding us home after the jazz show

where the singer’s voice 
tumbled and rose with the saxophone 
like the moon playing hide and seek 
with the clouds

The next day two hummingbirds 
fly figure eights near our cherry tree
—fruitless—yet this morning 
a crimson cherry hangs by its stem

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This poem grew from a seed of questions collected by

Lily Tobias

. She invited poets to write a poem in response to a question.

Poem Farm — Become a Guest Poet

She sent me the list of questions on June 13. I pondered the questions for a few days and then thought I would answer “Why do you write?” with a poem. When I finished I realized I hadn’t answered that question, at least directly, but I had answered the question “What is the last bird you saw?” I was both surprised and delighted by the process.

You can read the poems grown from seeds at the Poem Farm. Thank you so much for reading.

You can get a copy of my book Gathering the Pieces of Days from Unsolicited Press, Bookshop.org, or Amazon.