Hum

Joshua McKinney

                        When I smelled green through the blur 

 where its wings were, felt 

            the whir of their arc, heard the red 

            of its ruby throat-scales, tasted the dart of its forked tongue 

                        afloat in the foxglove -- my only desire was 

 to tell you. 

                        My weed-work stopped. Hands 

 in earth, I knelt by the garden wall, 

            and suddenly that world seemed remote. 

            I called to you, aloud, and the words I spoke 

                        were rote, broken, each one an arbitrary token 

 of the tiny bird that came to kiss the flowers. 

                        It was then I knew my exile's full extent. 

 The phenomenon of pungent sound is brighter --

            sheer iridescent now there then -- 

            than the hours of thought without flesh. Once, to be 

                        at one meant to act, so I have tried to make this 

 matter.