Love Dance of a Hummingbird

A few mornings ago, I was unexpectedly treated to a hummingbird courtship display in the middle of a vast morning silence. The speed, grace, and that always-astonishing burst of sound (created by the bird’s tail feathers) are unforgettable. I believe the birds here presently are Anna’s hummingbirds, though Costa’s have a somewhat similar display.

I was, in fact, already working on the poem below when the bird’s arrival interrupted my thoughts and certainly found its place in the poem.

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Love Dance of Hummingbirds

There is a silence in the air
Among the drying grass stems, where
They quiver with the lightest breezes' touch;
And there upon their faces such
Infinity untold
Upon the soil glistens in sun's gold.
A bug creeps to the pavement’s edge
Where sun rays dance amid the sedge.
And so the stillness and the gold are all
This morning till a sudden fall
Cleaves morning light, 
When burst of jewel-sound plummets bright
Above the sun-drenched earth
As love between two hummingbirds finds birth.

The photo at the top of the page is one I took some years ago in a lemon tree in my Phoenix AZ garden. This little male Anna’s was as grouchy as he appears because the weather was cold and rainy and I was tagging after him with my camera. Happily, of course the sun returned not too much later. (It always does in Phoenix!)

If you’ve never been so fortunate as to watch a hummingbird display, you might wish to try the assorted videos on YouTube. It is no small feat to capture the male in full dive, as they are said to drop at around sixty miles per hour, producing a vibrant chirping noise at the bottom of the dive. This "chirp” is now known to be produced by the wind whistling through the bird’s abruptly expanded tail feathers. It’s akin to the vibrations of air through a reed wind instrument, such as a clarinet.

Not that one thinks of a clarinet while watching! The little birds are all-absorbing in themselves.

I have also written some haiku this week. Some nighttime visions…

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Full moon lies cradled
in  mountains’ arms, wakens, soars
up through night, airborne.

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Orion leaps through
deep black sky, spear raised to fling
past the waiting moon.

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Now, I have been attempting to find a way to link directly to my book The Hillside Diary here from the blog. I’ve opened a shop on Ko-fi, with the hopes it will be a simple, one-click stop for my published writings. So far I’m only able to add the paperback version.

So I am putting the link here:

This project has had one additional advantage. Ko-fi does support commissioned work. So I have opened the option for you my readers to commission sonnets on everyday items you would like to see me write about! Is there any everyday item you have had in mind? You can commission such a poem through the button-link above!

In the meantime, happy new week!