Hydrangea - Blue Stranger - A Poem by Deda Kavanagh Video

(Posted pending approval on use of the video content...)
A few months back Deda contacted me about working together on a video using one of her poems. Technical issues in getting a recording of Deda reading the poem delayed us indefinitely. Tonight I decided summer was fading too far into memory for the hummingbird poem I had chosen to wait any longer, and so tried a reading myself.
Music: "Will You Sing Me a Lullaby (Instrumental) by Paul Sonnenberg; original video by http://www.WildLifeTheater.com

HYDRANGEA - BLUE STRANGER

Thought Id tell you of the blue bursts
that touched me this summer
when I notice a faint ticking on the petite veranda
whose door opens into the living room.

The humming bird returns. These twenty seconds−
a coming-out party for this bittiest bird;
Hes come to the banquet of bud and nectar,
all rivals for his attention.

He goes nippily to the 100-proof domestic blend−
the cool globe with liquor−sweet as when a baby
singles you out for a wide-eyed stare and smile,
that gummy giving that reminds you

of the day a long time ago you met your guardian angel,
he had your hand, on some fairy-tale bridge
ok, so that was the birds first stop.
He holds onto the ring around the perch with tiny toes

and aims that needle nose, his straw,
into the artificial flower, lifts his
lighthearted head and flutters the extract
through his ruby throat. On his way to getting high..

he fans to other desserts. At the canna
he buries his face in that same red
that comes when you close your eyes on the beach
and face the sun, a bright so wow,

you dont know if its a seeing or a feeling.
Its here he sinks his dart precisely,
as the Embroiderer sewing a garden on a table cloth;
backs his head like pulling thread, away;

balancing on air; suspended on mighty little helicopters;
he gulps and smacks; what must his
tongue be like inside that ice-pick beak?
then aims again, cheeks brushing past

rolling stigma and stalwart stamen
to suck the sole remaining sip.
He hovers near it in devotion, smells the memory,
and abruptly, fleetily, as flying saucer might,

tears inelegantly past one window, brick wall, other window
leaving me, jaw agog, with a scratchy laugh
gurgling in my ruby throat, spiders legs strewing
at the corners of my eyes, misted and burning.

Save & Share:

sonnenberg: Just got "nippily"... ("in a nippy manner" and "as to a nipple"...) It's amazing how reading a poem aloud repeatedly can help us understand it...

Plaice3: tiny toes, needle nose ... love it ... I find rich words/word plays more delightful than just about anything, except maybe a samba by you!