Poem for Wednesday and Glenstone Hummingbird

Hummingbird
By Mark Roper

Not just how
it hung so still
in the quick of its wings,
all gem and temper
anchored in air;

not just the way
it moved from shelf
to shelf of air,
up down, here there,
without moving;

not just how it flicked
its tongue's thread
through each butter-yellow
foxglove flower
for its fix of sugar;

not just the vest's
electric emerald,
the scarf's scarlet,
not just the fury
of its berry-sized heart,

but also how the bird
would soon be found
in a tree nearby,
quiet as moss at the end
of a bare branch,

wings closed around
its sweetening being,
and then how light
might touch its throat
and make it glow,

as if it were the tip
of a cigarette
smouldering
on the lip of a world,
whose face,

in the lake's hush
and the stir of leaves,
might appear
for a moment
composed.

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We had a heat index over 105 degrees on Tuesday, so everything I did was indoors and none of it was exciting for anyone but me! I have been rearranging my beads and bangles so that they're in hanging pockets instead of boxes, which both takes up less space and makes it easier to find things, and I've been moving Barbies and things I'm going to put on eBay down the basement for photographing and listing, so I got all my exercise running up and down the stairs. Since it was Tuesday, we had tacos for dinner. 

My Voyager group watched "Hunters" -- originally known as "Letters From Home" a.k.a. the episode with the deleted Janeway/Chakotay scene so famous that I had to show my fellow viewers what's left of it in the UPN trailer that's still up on YouTube -- then Paul and I watched two more episodes of The Sandman, which keeps getting better -- Death is awesomely written and acted, and I'll love any episode with Shakespeare and Marlowe drinking in a pub together. Hummingbird flitting around Split-Rocker: