With humming birds, you don’t hear them coming. You have to just wander to the kitchen flower box for no particular reason and look out for even less of a reason and get stopped in your tracks. A teensy little heavenly thing bobbing around the flowers and you forget to breathe. And by the time you get your cat in the window and call your husband down she’s gone. That’s usually the way it is with hummingbirds. Though one time it was different.
I had set a chair in the shade by my zinnia patch and I was looking out into my other garden bed just waiting for something good to happen when a little hummer came. She was only a foot away and I had a very nice look at all her shiny feathers and the way her tiny feet were held and how the sun shaped her delicate face as she sampled the zinnias. Two times she came and let me watch her like that. Then she was gone. Some time had passed when I heard a little chirp in my left ear. I turned and she was looking right at me as if to say, “Pay attention, here I am!”
So now I do. Because everything good really is all around you. And when I forget, I listen for the chirp.
