Hummingbird Writes A Letter

She wanted to write him a letter. She wanted to tell him how much she loved taking flight with him, sharing swatches of sun, and filling their nights and days with each others’ songs. But she couldn’t. Her hummingbird harried self couldn’t sit still, stop flitting for just a moment to write Cardinal a new year’s note. Hummingbird was just that…a hummer not a writer. A flitter not a sitter. To her stillness was death. Or at least indifference. Movement.. was life. Cardinal was a mover, too. Each morning at exactly the same time, when the sun was still 1/2 asleep, he would fly to this far-way feeder, strengthening his wings, toning his legs, and adding a perpetual glow to his feathers and face. On Sundays without fail he always found a birdbath steam, which brushed shine on his mostly scruff-free feathery face.

Whereas Cardinal kept his movement within a small sphere, the hummingbird was an indiscriminate mover; one day she flitted to a bed of butterfly weeds, the next to a pot of petunias. Yet, remarkably amid a field of basil and dahlias, they found moments of togetherness. His wing holding hers as they: flicked seed into water dams, broke bread-crumbs, (his dipped in gravy, she ate hers raw)flew to Canton and back; revealed shared aches & pains from wings, to beaks, to bones; and chirped non-stop, swapping stories about travels not-taken, feathered friends living lives of desperation, fading pasts, dreams deferred, and lost loves.

On regular days, Hummingbird’s heart would beat 1200 times per minute, but when Cardinal would swoop in, smoothing her matted mane, her heart hollered, flew to unimaginable heights, so much that she thought she might die of a hurried heart. How to tell him that because of him she flew with greater glee, found new beauty in old-forgotten flowers, and the nectar which after awhile had tasted all the same, now had a new sweetness to it?

Life tasted better with him. She knew this. But how to tell him without having him fly away? She felt she had overhummed her affections to him, told him too many truths or not enough, tipped-toed around chirping too much. The time was now. He wasn’t a migrator, but she was (a forgetful one at that), and so she was always thinking of when to fly South in search of eternal warmth. Yet, why fly your little self West when you know warmth is just a Cardinal wing-away? How to be still, how to be? If she stopped moving or thinking about moving, what would happen? A risk. But all flight is risk. You never know when you take off if you will land, (she did often have to put a flight patch to ease her landings, they were never her forte).

So…the letter. Leaves were falling. Flowers wilting. It was time. Could she sit still for one flutter? One flit? One minute? One moment to write this warmth in her life a letter?

As daylight flirted about, she took a deep breath and directed all her energy into stillness. With a shaky wing she wrote…

Cardinal

You are the hum in my life

Thank you for making my everydays and nights full of such sweetness, sexiness and serenity.

I thank the trees for you.

Happy new season. Looking forward to many...many...many more months of shared flights with you.

On a wing and a prayer, Hummingbird

She put the pen down, exhausted by the work of writing, but elated and illuminated at the thought of future travels, times and togetherness with Cardinal.