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.