HUMMINGBIRDS

Who, in cold lands where hummingbirds

                are rare, would see a bee-like bird,

and not a wee green man or pixie girl

                in emerald gown, with crystal wings?

Who wouldn’t hear in hummingbirds’

                metallic twitters, elfin tongues?

Finding a nest the size of a child’s teacup,

                woven of moss, lichens, spider web,

who wouldn’t think some fair princess

                had slept there, naming her Titania,

Tinkerbell, or Calothorax Lucifer (light-bearing,

                as the morning star)? Who, seeing a creature

sip from lily-throats, emerging covered

                with gold pollen, wouldn’t think of fairy dust?

Who wouldn’t see sequin-sized feathers—

                ruby, pink, azure, magenta—as coats

of iridescent mail, and feel the wearers

                of such wealth could call down mist, and weave

rainbows—that they could turn invisible

                (buzzing off, too quick to see)—that they came

from a world untouched by disease or time,

                where a mortal who spent one day,

then returned to his own land, would find

                his friends long dead, himself an old, old man?

~Charles Harper Webb


(from Webb, Charles Harper. "Hummingbirds." Amplified Dog. Los Angeles: Red Hen Press, 2006)