One… or The Other
…how feisty and pugnacious hummingbirds are.
— Ohio Department of Natural Resources
One: Of hummingbirds,
loveliest of the summer,
beauty of the free
flying within the space
of their so little life,
I sing.
Wanderers of
the very clear, clean,
purpose of the
nature of themselves…
The Other: … pugnacious wee ones,
battering and battling
down a course of sure intent
to displace, turf, and set upon,
launch against and fight,
no respite. If they were big
as life…
One: … the very miracle
and mystery of it,
the perfect touch of
splendor upon the landscape life of it;
the glory burnished in
the zunzun flight of it…
The Other: … holding to the surface
to bedraggle down all truth
now pummeled by their fights;
the nastiness of beak,
the proboscis most ferocious,
the tune and tenor of a fractious flight
— all worthy of a bad child’s
book of beasts.
In this our time,
they are a hot pepper warning
to our kind;
nasty little warriors,
with their snarled habits
running down the heart’s
cramped flow.
One: Come now.
Some things are better left
to the unspoken,
and to the forever caught
of the forever flying
in time’s hover;
the way the hummer
stays itself in stilly flight,
a beauty—
The Other: — or aggression’s ugly truth.
Barbara Lightner is a prize-winning poet who has appears in Rabbit, Front Porch Review, Verse Wisconsin, Poesia and OccuPoetry among others. She has published three chapbooks through Book Barrow Publishing. She currently lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the USA.