The Gift of Wings
I can forgive the world, but I cannot forgive myself. Last night at dusk, a hummingbird descended upon the Bee Balm ~ his wings so loud he startled me, and I screamed. I had my camera. This was the shot I tried for all last summer, and I frightened him away. Of course I am obsessed now, watching to see if he’s come back but I don’t see him, and I can’t let it go.
Yesterday a bird flew fast and low across Route 20 and intersected with my car. “Maybe I didn’t kill her,” I thought, and turned around to check. It was a robin. Big and beautiful and dead. I turned her over with a stick to make sure she wasn’t breathing. And then I stood there a long time, on the side of the busy road, as the cars whizzed by, looking into her open eye.
I picked her up. Tenderly, as if I’d known her, I carried her to the woods and wept ~ my tears a blanket on her gorgeous breast. On the way home, while I was sobbing in the car (driving slower now. Perhaps she saved me), the Robin said, “Why do you cry, when I have given you my wings?”
LBM 7/18/07

