We buried the hummingbird
in his mantle of light, buried
him deep in the
loam, one eye
staring into the earth's fiery
core, the other up
through
the door in the sky. His needle
beak pointed east, his
curled
feet west, and we each touched
our fingertips to his breast
before lifting them up from
the darkness to kiss. And
from our blessed
fists we
rained the powdery dirt
down, erasing the folded
wings,
the dream-colored
head, tamping the torn grass
with the heels of our
hands,
our bare feet, summer almost
over, swaying together on the
great
ship of death as clouds sailed by,
blowing our hair and the
wind
walked us back to our room.