For a Hummingbird
Who would have ever thought that there was one
wheel of cochineal in Yucatan,
the veritable, the aeronautical an-
archic doodle so unruly, who
at the end of May will duly come
back to sip the bowers of Yours Truly?
I grow them full of cups of trumpet vine.
I cultivate an alcoholic spread.
I work my plots to burgeon gaudy red
hot pokers and salvia — nectar wine.
I’ll sweat for grace, and labor to a fault
at my decoys, devout as a cargo cult,
even if my sweetest best standouts
may be to her as nectar of Brussels sprouts,
for what poor annuals posily aligned
could ever delight the Yucatanic mind?
I’m stuck here as her yardman, loyal slave,
overtaken advantage of in love.
I am a mere…. Enough of what I am!
It is enough that she comes to the rim
of any crater garish flare of damn
red. Her taste is — say it — gaudy. Dumb.
It’s as if Aphrodite, nude, would come
to any man who packed her brand of gum!
Then I retract that heresy. How could
anything attracting a goddess be crude?