Hummingbird In Underworld
While the prison band sings I Shall Be Released,
a hummingbird hovers near the barred window
sucking through its needle-beak nectar from
the fuchsia's red mouth. The sax player
makes his instrument cry, a sound sadder
than the kid weeping in Receiving & Release.
Anyone can fashion a shank from a toothbrush,
use a piece of wire or tin to terrorize his fellow man.
It's easier to give in to ennui, to believe you've got
nothing coming, nothing to give, than to pick up
brush or horn or pen and begin. Some people
will journey only with a cross-hatched map,
unlike the hummingbird, who travels flower
by flower, heart beating twenty times a second,
flying sideways, backwards, straight ahead.
A prison poet reads his eulogy for the young man
lost in Viet Nam, voice breaking
forty years of bondage. Men can't live without
war, just as the hummingbird cannot live
without flowers. There's a compass
in its head, magnetic particles pulling it back
to its sweet home. In one legend, the god
of music and poetry became a hummingbird and
flew to the underworld, where he learned
the secrets of transformation. A prison artist
paints Jesus in yellow, halo askew, one hand
clutching his robe, the other cupping a red petal
of blood. The artist loves Jesus and the blood
flowering in his palm, and the paint
that makes him creator. When Aztecs see
a hummingbird, they see a quick-hearted warrior
who beats back the darkness with iridescent wings.
Hummingbird sucks the evil out of men, leaves them
with a thirst for beauty and the trick of flying
while appearing to stay perfectly still.
