Hummingbird Talks & Talks & Talks...

Hummingbird Talks and Talks and Talks
Cardinal Listens.

Prior to meeting Cardinal, Hummingbird kept her hum to a low mum. So low only bats, sleeping upside down in caves could hear her. It wasn’t that she was shy or insecure it was that she had become accustomed to living in silence. A cacophony of sounds filled the air around her, but they were not sounds for her or to her. There were flies buzzing, spiders weaving, crow’s squawking, recycling recycling, but they mostly spoke to their own, and thus hummingbird, a community of one, was left to fly and hum alone.

Hummingbird was also forever busy, flitting from flower to flower, shrub to shrub slurpin’ up nectar, gnawing on petals, kneading seeds, and then replanting them in garden after garden after garden. She would watch as one of her seeds would blossom into a flower of unlikely brilliance. Often it would be the only Dahlia, the only Zinnia, or the only Iris in a field of Forget-Me-Nots. Hummingbird’s job was to beautify, make better the world, and who has time to really talk when there are gardens to grow, fields to flourish and canvas’ to color.

But then she met Cardinal. At first her sounds sounded scratchy and sticky around him. Frenetic even. “So then I flitted to this flower..um..so have you ever seen a night rainbow…do you believe in magic… sometimes when I’m flying, I wonder if I can touch the sky…you?” Maybe she was nervous. Maybe they just sung different songs. Or maybe she just didn’t know how to talk to someone with so much stature, so much strength. Cardinal oozed strength. It wasn’t just his maroon mane, cropped close to his face. It wasn’t his pristine feathers, scrubbed daily before his evening nest. It was his reveal. In their first flights together he had no problem sharing his struggles, his sadness, “I built a nest and thought it was forever…for months, maybe years, I followed the same path: birdfeeder,to nest in cedar tree, back to birdbath, return to birdfeeder, return to cedar tree…I had no idea there were so many other trees to nest, feeders to feed on, baths to bathe and steam in…”

It was Cardinal’s ease with words, with truths, with tales that allowed Hummingbird’s hum to be heard beyond the bat caves, and into the thistle, the ponds, the rabbit holes, anthills and the spiderwebs. He had wisdom in his wings.

Once Cardinal’s own sharing of self set her free, she couldn’t stop chirping…humming.
The mundane
This flower, it was tall.
The metaphysical
I can just sense when a storm is coming.
The methodical
So, first I got up and then I stretched, and then I made a nectar smoothie and read the stars, and then I forgot my feather cap at home and had to fly back and the flitted to three flowers and two shrubs and one herb and then I rested and hummed for you.

Soon their conversations melded, becoming an andante of past, pleasures, possibilities, and even a sprinkle of promises. And each morning, outside her nest a text etched by Cardinal’s beak would appear in the sand, the dirt, or the snow, it read,

“ What’s the word, Hummingbird?”

And so far, there were many.

Cardinal & Hummingbird Ready For Winter

She couldn’t believe her skin, already delicate and as thin as rice paper, was all scaly and flaky, making her iridescence self dull, drab. She hoped Cardinal wouldn’t notice or if he did, not care that her shiny summery self was having trouble adapting to the changing winds.

His feathers and skin in turn were as rich and wondrous as the moment she met him sunning himself under a shrub. At least externally, he seemed impenetrable—his scarlet skin glistening regardless of season, rain or sleet, sun or shade.. Cardinal was a constant not only in place and presence but in face and essence. This consistency, this grandness easily explained why Cardinal was the official state bird in 7 states, while Hummingbird wasn’t appointed to even one. She thought for a while that maybe she would be honored by California, her frenetic flapping and delicate frame a parallel to its shallow and skinny synergy, but it was not to be. California instead chose a quail, the antithesis of them, bulky, bland and hunted.

Yet, she felt quail-like as the air became colder as she needed to bulk-up to sustain herself through the long winter months. It was certainly a choice to remain in what many of her Hum friends called, the Tundra, but it was a choice she made with relative ease. Since flying with Cardinal, life was less frenetic, less lonesome, and full of serenity and a security she had never really known. But it was more than that—with Cardinal, Hummingbird...paused...stopped...focusing on the next nectar, the next flower, the next state, and worked to just focus on the now.

Yet, this now’ness as she called it was not without struggle. For one, her wings were frayed from falling leafs, her lungs burned as the winds whipped themselves into a frenzy, and though having the highest metabolism of any animal in flight, Hummingbird found herself getting chunky or rather plucky around the lower wing area. Pausing could not and should not be confused with complacency. Cardinal gave Hummingbird pause, and thus peace in her life, yet she, a natural migrator was wondering, worrying even..”what next?”

Next for Cardinal was the immediate: seeds, pick-ups, drop-offs, bird-calls to neighborly friends, a day trip to a new feeder and back, financing of a new nest, running on a wing-mill, and feather preening. Cardinal was a constant.. he had a plane and terrain, a map and a compass. His next was now. Hummingbird’s next was …

“Namaste!” she called to him across the leaf-strewn ground. Cardinal raised his beak and smiled. Hummingbird flitted towards him and perched herself on a near-by wilting rose. They looked at each other. They were different in all the obvious ways: color, size, shape, but so___ similar in the quietest of ways. They loved to chirp and chip and chirp even when there was no moonlight left to see each other; they believed in destiny; loved almost all other species (except ones they ate); liked their vertebrae’s ruffled and rubbed; did not wait for magic to happen, but made magic happen; liked routine, but needed new adventures, and uniquely both were willing to reveal a vulnerability, a flaw, a broken wing for each other to see. Cardinal knew that she was cold, chilled, and that he would need to be her warmth. Hummingbird knew that she was his movement to new planes and new possibilities.

They looked at each other. As the last leaf fell, Hummingbird, her colors fading with the summer sky, and Cardinal, the only color in a world of gray, touched each other’s wings, and breathed under the formidable autumn sky.