The Hummingbird

He appeared to her at dusk, zipping

down pale-yellow thimbles, spires

luminous against delphinium blue.

For seven days he returned, morning

and evening, as if he kept watch,

could sense when she was looking out.

Foxgloves withered, went to seed.

For weeks no sign of him at all.

She planted bee balm, scarlet sage.

Phlox petals uncurled, legitimate white

and bastard magenta, unwanted

seedlings her grandmother banished.

One morning, before the others woke,

she spied him briefly, sucking

the sweetness from pink-eyed phlox.

Lilies unleashed their fragrance,

sepals and petals peeled back,

exposing anthers rusty with pollen.

Atop hairy stalks of a butterfly weed,

green clustered heads burst into orange—

five-pointed stars streaked with red.

Her ears remember the whir of wings,

air stirred to a wordless song,

the way something shifted to fullness.

Jane McKinley is a Baroque oboist and author of Vanitas (2011 Walt McDonald First-Book Prize), and Mudman, forthcoming from Able Muse Press. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Five Points, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She received a 2023 Poetry Fellowship from the NJ State Council on the Arts.