Hummingbirds

Wings whirred gray,
poised bodies darted green
as they hovered over my father's feeder
siphoning his sweet mix,
each a visual disturbance,
a stigmata leading the eye
where it will.
Thirty years he watched
with solemn joy their ephemeral
perfection no child could match.
After the last hum
of his fading heart, they did not fade
but drank as deep from me.
When we added a room
to warm our generation,
the feeder migrated.
Crashes into a new window
sound our foiling of
their flight plan.

Father, I am what is left of
your degeneration,
truer than birds to your memory
working furiously to be still.

Sometimes at dawn they
crack coordinates on the pane;
I roll and dream that house
not quite this one,
you at the window
blessing moves I never made
in a realm where nothing competes,
just shines and fades
from eyes restless to hold us
now as we rise together in benediction
toward better fathers, better sons.

by Loren Sundlee