We have a hummingbird feeder outside our kitchen window. This week, we filled it with sugar water again and, lo and behold, we have had visitors. What fascinating little creatures, so awkward yet so beautiful. It is as if they don't really fly, they hover from place to place. They bless my day.
In a recent issue of Alive Now I saw this poem entitled "Courage" by Debbie Parvin. I think I'll post it in our kitchen.
With Goliath's might, you slice the air with needle sword,
race with monstrous wrath, defend your claim
to ruby water hanging
like a vial of blood in summer's sweetened air.
Yet you are more like David,
dwarf among the feathered flock -
a thimble bug
so slight that, when you light upon the willow's leaf,
it does not move.
Still, God has chosen you, the most unlikely -
fitted you with sequined garb
and fashioned beater wings to bear you
eighteen hundred miles each year to prove
though life may tower giant-like around us
we, the miniscule,
can rise
and hum.
