The hummingbird’s nervous embroidery
through beach fog by our back
patio’s potato vine
reminds me of my mother’s southern
drawl from the kitchen: She’s flying,
flying like bird! I’ve heard that
as a child I involuntarily flapped my hands
at my side during moments
of intense concentration. I’d flutter
over a drawing, a doll, a blond hamster
in a shoebox maze. There are ways
to keep from breaking
apart. My guardians. My avian
blood. I believed
birds bubbled inside me—my own
diagnosis—though the doctors called it
something else: a harmless
twitch. A body’s
crossed wires. The lost
birds of my childhood
nerves have never
returned. But when you held
my elbow as we walked the four
blocks to the boardwalk,
we saw the brief
dazzle of a black-
chinned hummingbird—the first
I’d ever seen. It sheened
and tried to sip
from my sizzled wrists’
vanilla perfume. I knew
a single one
from the magic
flock had finally found me.
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A big thank you to Alison McGhee for her curation of these beautiful poems.
For more about Anna Journey, please click here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Journey
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