Today’s Jay Imagines Herself a Hummingbird

Well, why not? This little feeder caters

only to the droves of four-inchers who

can sit-and-flit as if the perches were hot

landing pads. So, if this has what she needs,

then improv-ing a hovering hummer’s

an appropriate way to hope. True, her

explosive bulk and her blues, the hues

of power burst the browner congress

like blue fire, like a flashy band of desire,

vamping the local tedium, seizing

the break to free-jazz their dreary tunes.

She’s like that time you always remember—

that impulse you knew could destroy

your life—the fell swoop when you deduced 

a drab existence isn’t all there is, isn’t

all you’ll ever need to please. In my

cathartic case something like her

entered as an omen I’d’ve preferred

someone even blinder to interpret.

Then what first rehearsed to depict

stock tragedy unsettled instead

into a sprawling drama of the absurd,

a directorial risk that’s unearthed,

an abyss of possibility, my

blind alley of visibility. Look:

third shift, a worker, churning dough,

re-discovers one morning he’s an artist,

best home sculpting fragrant stacks

of unsolved wood. And a girlfriend,

no longer satisfied to abide

the swollen lines of lying men, decides

it’s time for that whim she’s always had

to dance. And a wife, or a husband,

whose body’s meant for loving differently,

confronts the facts, a staggering move,

and gradually life renews, re-begins

in the tough time it takes not to go back.

This man or this woman flutters into

what is need and chooses what will be

the vital lead—still wheeling before

whatever consequences beckon next.