Summer story

In these first days of summer one of my favorite summer "things" happened: many of our green bushes and plants have flowered. It's that short time period of 1 or 2 weeks each year when they are something other than a rather unremarkable pile of green leaves. Here are four that I wanted to share with you. With apologies to the plants, for in reality they are much more attractive than what I caught with my camera.

Maybe you'll notice some around you, too. It happens so fast. Before you know it they'll be back to their "everyday look."

Summer Story

When the hummingbird
sinks its face
into the trumpet vine,
into the funnels

of the blossoms,
and the tongue
leaps out
and throbs,

I am scorched
to realize once again
how many small, available things
are in this world

that aren't
pieces of gold
or power--
that nobody owns

or could buy even
for a hillside of money--
that just
float about the world,

or drift over the fields,
or into the gardens,
and into the tents of the vines,
and now here I am

spending my time,
as the saying goes,
watching until the watching turns into feeling,
so that I feel I am myself

a small bird
with a terrible hunger,
with a thin beak probing and dipping
and a heart that races so fast

it is only a heartbeat ahead of breaking--
and I am the hunger and the assuagement,
and also I am the leaves and the blossoms,
and, like them, I am full of delight, and shaking.

Mary Oliver