Ode to You, Hummingbird
Your talent for flight––
the synchronicity
of wing beat, hover, and float,
your acrobatic repertoire,
you little wind dancer.
Your hunger for nectar––
the harvest of trumpet blossom,
of scarlet day rocket
or common fuchsia bloom,
with a slither of tongue.
Your gorget, its shimmer––
where I want
your tiny body to take me
on its route of evanescence*
out among the glitterings.
*from Emily Dickinson’s “Hummingbird”
Your talent for flight––
the synchronicity
of wing beat, hover, and float,
your acrobatic repertoire,
you little wind dancer.
Your hunger for nectar––
the harvest of trumpet blossom,
of scarlet day rocket
or common fuchsia bloom,
with a slither of tongue.
Your gorget, its shimmer––
where I want
your tiny body to take me
on its route of evanescence*
out among the glitterings.
*from Emily Dickinson’s “Hummingbird”
Beached
Low tide whispers
his name as sun sets down
as seabirds ruffle
golden braids of light
cross the water’s sheen
then nose up away
into a cloudless sky
here
where
the water’s mouth
swallowed a man whole
from the seabed floor
where
he gasped and choked
on his own sobs
here
where
I trace names
in the sand
of all my dead
pray
whether death chose him
or he chose death
the water cradles him
in boundless arms
Low tide whispers
his name as sun sets down
as seabirds ruffle
golden braids of light
cross the water’s sheen
then nose up away
into a cloudless sky
here
where
the water’s mouth
swallowed a man whole
from the seabed floor
where
he gasped and choked
on his own sobs
here
where
I trace names
in the sand
of all my dead
pray
whether death chose him
or he chose death
the water cradles him
in boundless arms
Drifting Zuihitsu
Dreams carry me to barren stretches of concrete peppered by buttons
of stone beyond the stars on a precipice from which to view the world.
Everything couples in greens and browns. Walks are long and steady
with no field of vision for what came before, what is to follow.
Curtains are drawn, doors latched. There is no entrance, no welcome.
I inhale the sky, it’s blues and whites, its silences. It is not the voice
that commands the story: it is the ear.*
Breezy jazz off a ragged skiff drifts along the lick of water
to its boat in the slip, bat ray nearing its barnacled bow.
I squint in the bright summer’s sun, doze wrapped in a warm slip of air.
Foggy silhouettes of my dead in cruciform tiptoe through,
shushing each other, knowing I am sure to shoo them off.
Wind chimes dance and slide their cymbals up against each other.
Dark flocks of geese squawk inside the beat of their wide wings.
My time to fly has yet to be born in me.
*Calvino
Andrena Zawinski’s poetry includes several chapbooks and three full collections, the most current Landings from Kelsay Books. She was awarded first prize in this year’s Ventura County Poetry Project’s Origins contest. Her photographs have appeared at California Quarterly, Caesura, Copper Nickel, Levure Littéraire, Literary Nest, and others. Her poems most recently appear in Artemis Journal, Maintenant Journal of Dada Writing and Art, Welcome to the Neighborhood Anthology of Coexistence, Gold Man Review, Delmarva Review. She is also Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com.
