The Man Who Loved Hummingbirds
- The Man Who Loved Hummingbirds
Once I saw my father lift from last Fall's leaves below our wide picture window
a hummingbird, victim of reflected surfaces, the one clue a single feather clinging above the sill.
He cradled its body in his cupped hands and breathed across the fine iridescent chest and ruby throat.
I remembered all the times his hands became birdcalls, whistles, crow's caw from a blade of grass.
Then the bird stirred and rose to perch on his thumb. As he slowly raised his hand
the wings began to hum and my father's breath lifted and flew out across the world [End Page 16]
Jeff Daniel Marion has published nine volumes of poetry, including Ebbing & Flowing Springs: New and Selected Poems and Prose, 1976–2001, winner of the 2003 Independent Publisher Award in Poetry and the 2003 Appalachian Book of the Year, and Letters to the Dead: A Memoir. His poems and fiction have appeared in more than sixty journals and anthologies, and he has received the James Still Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His poem "The Man Who Loved Hummingbirds" originally appeared in the Spring 1989 issue of Appalachian Heritage.
