Mammoth

by Robert Wrigley

Returning the refilled feeder to its hanger on the tree,
I am followed, and from my first step out the door
to the careful slipping of the loop of twine over the hook's tang
made to understand – as he darts within inches of my eyes –
that this hummingbird, while he may not despise me,
finds my human dawdling not simply unacceptable but offensive,
a lumbering no less appalling than the moonscape of my face
and its billion plumbable pores. Even the vast tidal wash
of my infernal, slow-witted breathing disgusts him. Therefore he loops
so swiftly around me I can hardly blink, and when I tell him he is
beautiful, he hears only the two ton roar of a woolly mammoth
as it thrashes in a bog, at the edges of which, this time of year,
the red, sweet flowers he loves most of all still thrive.