V E R S E and I M A G E

what does a hummingbird know

in its world of nectar and need

nightly forced to torpor

by the constant urge to feed

through staggering migration

are its dreams equally desperate?

does it wake hungry

ill-tempered with beauty

cramped with desire

suddenly alert to the nature of sugar

aware that satisfaction can only ever be

illusory

and what does the hummingbird sense

as it sips the flower’s allure

does it know of delicate meanings

pitched fever-tight

into its tiny world of furtive speed

dare I surmise anything?

maybe nectar is only a meal

sugar an ache that will pass

beauty an accident of form

and nothing means more than a wing

clasped into the air and released

effortless

from Alchemy, Kelsay Books, American Fork, UT; © 2024

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Hovering to sip sugar water, flicking your tongue into the red plastic flower, then dive bombed by a lance-tipped green blur – this is daily life for a hummingbird in the Eastern US. We only have the one species here, ruby-throated, and they do not play well with others. When it comes to a choice feeder there is no sharing, unlike the scene in the Western US where a cloud of a dozen birds, four or five different species, will jointly keep a feeder sincerely humming.

These last two weeks of September we have been visited hourly by the chunkiest hummingbird I have ever seen. The sleeker slimmer birds will chase her away but then she’s right back. (She-birds only; all the males have left for Central America by the end of August and these more svelte visitors and chasers have likely already burned fat as they’re migrating through from farther north). I realize hummingbirds have to bulk up each autumn, entering a period of hyperphagia before migration similar to black bears before hibernation, but this bird is a real hunk. She is going to have no problem making the 800 km flight from Florida to Yucatan, a natural miracle for such a tiny creature who, even at twice her normal body weight, still weighs only 6 grams – about the weight of a postcard, or of the well-sharpened pencil you’ll use to write a note to Guatemala to let them know to expect this ruby-throat in a couple of weeks.

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Audubon NC suggests continuing to fill hummingbird feeders until the second week in October. Abundant sugar will not deter the birds from setting out on their southward journey; their migration is triggered by light, or actually its absence, the diminishing length of day. All creatures live by their own internal clock. For some the clock’s ticks are soil temperature, snowmelt, the movement of water through earth; for others alarms are set by earth’s rotation and the stretch of sunlight and shadow.

And no creature lives in isolation. What if come clocks tick out of rhythm with the others? In the Western US, when broad-tailed hummingbirds arrive from their wintering grounds they depend on spring-blooming glacier lilies for nectar to replenish their exhausted energy. By 2012, however, biologists noted that the lilies were beginning to open seventeen days earlier than they had several decades prior. Some would already be withered before the hummingbirds even arrived. By 2050 the birds may completely miss the span of lily bloom.

Phenological mismatch is the term for this consequence of global climate change. What if migrating flycatchers miss their fly hatch? What if flowers bloom to no pollinators? Some species seem to benefit from early spring – marmots have a longer season to chow down and birth more marmettes. Some species can adapt to new timings but many can’t, especially as climate clocks accelerate their vagaries and variations. We can’t yet know all the consequences, but we know our children and grandchildren are experiencing a different world from the world in which we grew up.

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When most only wanted their fur

Belyaev wanted their genes

He selected those he could touch

The ones who ate from his hand

Exerting curious pressure

On his wild silver stock

Closed in outdoor cages

To bear Belyaev’s chosen litters

Where is the gene for submission

For loyalty and bonding?

Somewhere, it seems

Connected to curly tails

White stars on the face

Flopped ears and blunt snouts

Wags and whines and barks

Which compete for favors

Other than food

So Belyaev’s foxes tamed the men

With prolonged puppyhood

And after thirty generations

Heeled happily across their yard

In through the open front door

from Alchemy, Kelsay Books, American Fork, UT; © 2024

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Embryology, cosmology, evolution . . . double helices, insect wings, quarks . . . mystery, contemplation, enlightenment: the poems of Alchemy wend their way through an expanding universe of discovery. There is scarcely a field of science or philosophy that Rae Spencer does not embrace in this collection, using language both precise and technical as well as elevated and elevating. This slim coverlet of atmosphere that supports us, this beneficent congregation of creatures within such mild extremes of warmth and moisture and light, how can one walking through such a place not be inspired?

And once inspired, what enters us to feed our hearts, what strikes a tonal chord within our minds What shall we believe in? What shall we hope for? Nothing is beneath our noticing; nothing is unworthy of praise. Perhaps the best way to receive Rae Spencer’s expansive embrace embodied in her universalistic collection is as, in the poet’s own words, a patchwork philosophy of wonder (Agnost).

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Rae Spencer is a veterinarian and lives in Virginia, USA. Alchemy is available at Kelsay Books.

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++++++++++++++++++ – Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species

He spent pages contemplating seeds

How some survived in seawater

Others in the crops of owls

In the feces of locusts

In the stomachs of fish

Frozen in icebergs

Dried in a clump of mud

Between the toes of a partridge

How long in the garden?

Hovering over phials of curiosity

Some rank with the rot of failure

Others yielding green secrets

To the man who struggled to ask

Is there another explanation?

And in the end answered himself

With seed, with barnacles and pigeons

So Darwin concluded

Without the benefit of Mendel’s peas

Or Watson, Crick, and Franklin’s helices

Without diffusion gels

Sequencers and microchips

Argument is as simple as a garden

Heavy and sweet with fruit

Ripe with answers

from Alchemy, Kelsay Books, American Fork, UT; © 2024

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