this afternoon

today i looked out the kitchen window and saw something i've never seen before. a hummingbird, quietly perched on one of the many thick black lines that stream cable/phone/power past our house on wooden poles. the tiny creature had its back to me and was grooming itself with its long, slender, needle-like beak. it was framed perfectly in the rectangle of the window screen and, although not really possible to touch, breathtakingly close. the shining emerald green of its feathers first caught my eye, then the red blush on its head -- then i realized what it was. just sitting there, combing its gem-toned pelt. i have seen plenty of hummingbirds, but all of them in blurred motion, flitting from tree to tree, or zooming through the air like giant bumblebees. never one so still, absorbed in its preening, a tiny jewel on a wire.