a photograph by Sonja Bingen
Tag Archives: nature
Wings
To Pat Fennell,
a fountain of information on hummingbirds
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
A thousand beats
per belly,
eating drops of nectar
to get you through
the great Sonoran Desert,
eating tiny flies
to get you
to Central America
or even
South America,
flying
the Gulf of Mexico
in a long day.
All I want to hear
before I die
are wings of hummingbirds.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
Hummingbird Drama
a photograph by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Continental Divide, New Mexico is located on a major migration route for hummingbirds. Ethel only keeps three feeders at our house because of the amount of work necessary. This a photo of one bird, but right now we have swarms of them. Wings whir; they dart and buzz; they fly off to nearby trees; they sit on our fence; then they return to the feeders. They often look like a moving cloud. Each feeder, if they are to be kept filled, requires five trips to where they are out of the house a day. We often have up to six species at the feeders, often quarreling, at once.
Filed under Art, Ethel Mortenson Davis, Photography
Drought
by Ethel Mortenson Davis
Had I not gone the extra mile
this morning,
I would have missed
the unexpected
deep purple flowers
of the Desert Lupine—
shockingly beautiful–
with undertones of crimson
among the death-like color
of the gray rabbit brush.
Filed under Ethel Mortenson Davis, Poetry
