Nazca hummingbird
Annunciation
by Tim Myers
Once the hummingbird
comes to you
in a dream
(they are, as the Nazca knew,
messengers from
the mountain gods),
once it has hovered before you
blurring wings of beryl, topaz, cobalt,
hungry for nectar dips its long bill
into you,
leaving soft grains of sun-yellow pollen
against the walls of your throat,
Poet, wake up, avoid
at all costs
the sad silence of denying
that seed-ache,
rain-fruit-sex-word,
planted there
at the root of your tongue.
(from That Mass at Which the Tongue Is Celebrant,
Pecan Grove Press, 2008)
All text copyright Tim Myers 2008
For almost a thousand years, the Nazca people of what is now Peru constructed huge geoglyphs, hundreds of lined-out figures scattered across the Nazca Desert, one of the driest places on Earth. (A source states that it receives an average of only 20 minutes of rain annually). One of these figures is a hummingbird, shown in the aerial photo here.
I’ve long been deeply drawn to
hummingbirds, and I use the Nazca
hummingbird as my personal symbol.
The black and white drawing is by my son Seth.