Tzunuum, the Hummingbird
Thirty days I waited patient
and this is the day you came.
All month I wondered
how you would find me.
Today you arrive, to bless my new home
with good fortune and large-hearted love.
Two of you grace my feeder,
hung far from trees, on a tiny patio.
Your hummingbird hearts so huge,
at two and a half percent of your weight,
the largest of all the animals;
my human one a mere
five tenths of one percent.
Dear hummingbirds who visit me,
please stretch my heart
to love as large as you.
What a tiny bird you are
to have such stunning powers—
Flying backwards! Hovering!
Your fluttering wings do hum
but even more astounding,
they move in the pattern of the symbol
that looks like an eight, and signifies
infinity. Infinity!
Hummers who have come to visit,
I humbly ask that I remember
your gift of continuity.
And I’m told you can fly in the rain,
and shake your heads to dispel the water.
A hundred times a second you shake,
while you fly, and maintain direction!
Will you help me shake my troubles away
while I stay my course, like you?
I wonder if the two of you
are the selfsame ones who lapped before,
with your forked and fringed tongues,
at the feeder where I used to live?
Now that you have found me again
I wonder how I could have doubted.
After all, in springtime when you migrate,
you cover 500 miles across the Gulf
and fly for 20 hours straight.
And you migrate alone, not in flocks—
a shining, introvert model!
Dear Tzunuum friends who visit me,
on this day of your blessing my home,
I bow to your beauty, and pray
to live worthy of your example.
©Susa Silvermarie 2018
Hummers always outside my bedroom window sipping at their favored Abutilon palmeri. I love your poem honored them and their example. I especially appreciate facts I learned, like the bird’s head-shaking of water “help me shake my troubles away/while I stay my course… “Love it!