Art: Photography by Marie Dashkova
Hummingbirds
I remember reading recently of how
hummingbirds only suckle from lilac
and lavender blooms for their fuel,
their nectarous urge merely the gruel
a weary, calloused farmhand might sock
away, mopping a soaked and furrowed brow
while searching furrows and windrows for real
and lasting bread. These tiny jewels,
jade and lapis lazuli mood rings they are,
subsist on common bugs. Like the man—so far
from living on ambrosia and mead—who weekly fills
his tank on far more basic things. His meals
reclaim my thoughtless waste: a loaf laced with lines
of mold, a half banana half-ripe, the boon
of my wasted yogurt only one day past due,
as the hummers drone off unnoticed through
the web of leaves, leaving only wilted blooms
in their wake. While they refine sugar into the fine
mystic antigravity of their departing flight,
I gather sticky screwtop bottles from the lawn—
syrupy Boone’s Farm I neither opened nor emptied—
and as the leathern sun comes dappled to the trees
again, I toss them jingling to the recycling bin
thinking of the fuel it takes to get us through the night.
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About the Author:
Jeremy Gregersen is a graduate of the Universities of Utah, Michigan, and Oregon. His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including Poet Lore, The Maine Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife and son, where he works as Head of School at The Meadows School.
Art: Photography by Marie Dashkova, @melodyphoto
In the artist’s words:
My name is Marie Dashkova; I am 25, and I was born in Moscow, Russia. I currently live here. I started to be interested in photography at the age of 12 when I was studying photo-shop to create avatars and images for sites, so I decided to make selfies using old Sony video-camera that had photo options. I was inspired a lot; it became my hobby; now I could use not only images from the internet and photos by different artists, but I could also create something by myself.
Here you can find me: