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.