How to Survive This Century

How to Survive This Century

Do not spend hours dickering with stones, persuading them

To come down from the mountain, after a year under the

Hydrangea, new moss grown over lichen, only four so far

Agreed to advance their journey to the sea, to the fire circle

I made. The others speak with their gravity against gloved

Entreaties, equanimous in their refusal to roll as I insisted.

Rather give in to the weight of opinion. For the next hour,

Do nothing but watch hummingbirds hover furious and rapt,

Transmuting light into color and feathers into song, deadly

Determined to be only and exactly what they are. In the

Andes, some don’t hover, rest between sips, gazing placid

From the branch. Watch all night as their body temperatures

Fall in half, hearts slow to five percent of the daily beat,

Wake next day to full sun their eye is focused on the pistil,

Beak focused on the fly. They ask nothing of the stone, ask

Nothing of the heliconia, male or female variety, accept the

Verdict of gravity, of weather, evolution’s tornado engulfing

Them, alighting in some new country, beaks gracefully bend

To fit the blossom, heartbeats calibrate the new temperature,

Are only fire and feather, fierce and focused on the nectar.