The earth is hard and dry…
time to water the garden.
In front of me, a sudden blur of activity…
the shimmering green
and the jeweled red
of a Ruby Throated Hummingbird.
Why is he so close to me?
He is only two feet away.
I see the black of his eye
as he looks right at me.
Does he will me to see him?
Then it dawns on me.
I walk from the front of the house
to the backyard,
and refill the empty feeder.
Within moments he is back at his drinking,
his long beak poking into the sweet water.
This bird, a solitary flier
for thousands of miles during his life,
often finds his way back to our area
and even possibly our feeder,
or so they say.
That is pretty darn smart.
Whoever coined the term
“Bird brain”
did not know this hummingbird,
Maybe he didn’t know birds at all.
—
Linda Haslanger is an emerging poet. She last wrote forty years ago. The passing of her mother (2023) and her creative writing teacher (2024) inspired her to start again. She lives in Indiana with her husband and her dog, and she has two grown children.
