Elegy

I didn't take my camera/phone out back in my yard, for morning coffee. Had I, there would have been a portrait of my local hummingbird, dwarfed by the clothes pins on the line. Instead, a second after I regretted this, they flew down, and right into the claws of my neighbor cat who took them in one bite. I was there though and pulled them out, but they were dying, one wing mangled, and way too many little feathers spread in my hand. They would feed on the blooming pomegranate tree, and then the red geranium, right in front of me, at my table.

I was going to put them in the geranium pot, but they held onto my finger, and so I held them with their heart beating, beating, beating, for some minutes, then with one last gesture they lifted back their head, revealing their jewelled throat, raised their good wing as if in memory of flight, then passed.

So, they lie under sycamore bark at the base of my cactus, which recently bloomed, and, I wished them joy and release into the universe. I will miss them hovering nearby, in my mornings.