George Yatchisin
Hummingbird in Silhouette
It's the bitty beak of the bird
I can barely comprehend as it
seems barely there twenty feet
atop the hedge, more suggestion
than physical entity, reminding
me of geometry class, learning
a line is merely a series of points.
In size and dimension, of course,
the hummer could fold into a cameo
gifted to one's intended, holding
all that flattering impossibility that
love is, thrilling, so close to escape,
abuzz with all its nectar, yet hovering,
a world ever on the edge of unbuttoning.
Bio
George Yatchisin is Santa Barbara Poet Laureate, 2025-2027, and the author of Feast Days (Flutter Press 2016) and The First Night We Thought the World Would End (Brandenburg Press 2019). His poems have been published in journals including Antioch Review, Askew, and Zocalo Public Square. He is co-editor of the anthology Rare Feathers: Poems on Birds & Art (Gunpowder Press 2015), and his poetry appears in anthologies including Reel Verse: Poems About the Movies (Everyman's Library 2019).