Dana Sonnenschein
U.S. Covid-19 Deaths Top 76,000
May 6, 2020
Late afternoon. The sky, dark
and heavy with clouds.
At first just a few drops fall,
then more. A hummingbird
flies in to perch in the rain
on the old rhododendron.
She’s not taking shelter
beneath leaves. No, she’s
out on a gray-brown limb
that had to reach for sun.
She fans her scalloped tail
and preens, turning
from side to side, finally
stretching out her wings
and holding them upright,
so droplets course down
her wingtips onto her back
and out over her tail.
Then she’s up, a feathery blur
until she settles again—
she’s found water pooled
in one of the leaves forming
a coronet near the top.
She fluffs and flutters,
bathing, her form a flickering,
glitter-green and white,
a flower I’ve not seen before
and may never again.
About the writer:
Dana Sonnenschein teaches at Southern Connecticut State University. Her publications include books of poetry and prose poems (Bear Country, Natural Forms, No Angels but These, and Corvus). Recent work has appeared in Memory House, The Ekphrastic Review, Permafrost, Feminist Studies, Poppy Road Review, and Terrain.org’s Dear America anthology.
Image: Amerika No. 1 by Stella Michaels. No medium specified. No size specified. By 2016. By free license.
