i've seen it....

more than once, more than twice..
the seduction of a hummingbird

faster than the speed of light

The hummingbird: a seduction
(to be read aloud lustily)

If I were a female hummingbird perched still
and quiet on an upper myrtle branch
in the spring afternoon, and if you were a male
alone in the whole heaven before me, having parted
yourself, for me, from cedar top and honeysuckle stem
and earth down, your body hovering in midair
far away from jewelweed, thistle, and bee-balm;
And if I watched how you fell, plummeting before me,
and how you rose again and fell, with such mastery
that I believed for a moment you were the sky,
and the red marked-bird diving inside your circumference
was just the physical revelation of the light’s
most perfect desire;
And if I saw your sweeping and sucking
performance of swirling egg and semen in the air,
the weaving, twisting vision of red petal
and nectar and soaring rump, the rush of your wing
in its grand confusion of arcing and splitting
created completely out of nothing just for me;
Then when you came down to me, I would call you
my own spinning bloom of ruby sage, my funneling
the storm of sunlit sperm and pollen, my only breathless
piece of scarlet sky, and I would bless the base
of each of your feathers and touch the tine
Of string muscle binding your wings and taste
the odor of your glistening oils and hunt
the honey in your crimson flare,
and I would take you and take you and take you
deep into any kind of nest you ever wanted.
                                      ~ Pattiann Rogers
                                    Song of the World Becoming:
                            New and Collected Poems, 1981-2001


there is something that pulls your eye..
some flash and flicker
some fast and vast verve of air..
whish and woosh
some clickity ratcheting clackity
up and down and inside out
a mantra
a yantra
 that glints in the ear
as well as an eyeful..

and before you know it..
the ascent of some
psychedelic firecracker
rises higher and loftier
than you'd ever imagine that
this delicate winged harlequin
could and should and would -

rocketing thru space
straight up..
straight up..
straight up..

without so much
as a flip
of a whip
the descent
a nose dive..
 aiming for the
very center of our earth
and it is..
as a winged version of Eros..
( the asteroid that comes nearer
to this planet than any celestial body..
except the moon)
to shower its brilliant boldness
on the chosen princess

bleep!
one brisk short reverb..
like the beginning of a fire alarm
caught in mid sentence..
bleep!
an electric staccato hey! 
pitched high and mighty as the flight itself..
look alive, my beauty!

the quick deep dip into the tail feathers
seed planted

faster than the speed of light