Summer Story

When the hummingbird

sinks its face

into the trumpet vine

into the funnels

of the blossoms

and the tongue

leaps out

and throbs

I am scorched

to realize once again

how many small, available things

are in this world

that aren't

pieces of gold

or power-------

that nobody owns

or could but even

for a hillside of money-----

that just float

in the world,

or drift over the fields,

or into the gardens,

and into the tents of the vines,

and now here I am

spending my time,

as the saying goes

watching until the watching turns into feeling,

so that I feel I am myself

a small bird with a terrible hunger

with a thin beak probing a dipping

and a heart that races so fast

it is only a heart beat ahead of breaking---

and I am the hunger and assuagement

and also I am the leaves and the blossoms

and, like them, I am full of delight and shaking.

Mary Oliver