My mother used to accuse me of only remembering the bad things in life. Bad things were like giants in my mind huge trees standing over me branches scraggly reaching out to scrape my skin seize my heart and stomp on my soul. She was wrong. Good memories flit through my thoughts from time to time. little pieces of happiness like icing on a spoon I'd been given to lick. Like when I sat on the porch oh so high up feet dangling over grass that almost always needed cutting. Wood beneath my rump was rough aged splintered and in need of repair but still I sat and watched the birds. Closing my eyes I can see them now via the film reels of memory. Green so green, the trees that grew tall (without the scraggly branches but ones I loved to climb) and that grass long and unattended blowing in the wind. They'd fly about eating seed and suet building nests in the mansion several stories up at the top of a pole
(that I had once
backed into with a
riding lawnmower
leaving dents in both); golden finches bright red cardinals feisty blue jays chip chirping their songs drowning out the monotony of an only child lonely child. All beautiful but none more so than the hummingbird. Gramps had hung a
nectar feeder right near the rail red plastic with yellow flowers. In stillness, safety. and so I sat unmoving waiting. They were magic to me hovering as they do wings a mere blur moving in to drink then back repeating the motion until they had their fill. I was fascinated by how small and sleek unique they were. And perhaps somewhere in my childhood heart I felt a connection with the here (on the weather-beaten porch my grandmother would yell at me to get off of eventually or I'd fall and break my neck) and the then the there the place I had first heard the calming hum of the hummingbird and felt at peace.