“not knowing is most intimate…”

 “Christine Smart’s poems perform acts of clear-eyed unsentimental recollection and fierce longing, and move with an earthy music that is all their own. The reader is left with a sense of the sharp, bittersweet tang of the authentic.”

Don McKay

HUMMINGBIRD

Ethereal in my hand, an iridescent female, 
feathers fanned, beak wide open.

I place her in the hollow arbutus stump, 
a stupa, covered with wild rose petals.  

Did she expect a long life, more sugar water 
at the feeder, more buzzing and display?

The glass tricked her 
	as images beguile us 
into believing
	this life will go on 
and on, 
	this body will endure 
in a certain way 
		of being. 
	
Like the bird, enticed into flying fast,
we dash full force toward something glimpsed 

some truth longed for, 
just out of reach, on the far side 

where nothing is clear or certain.
Winner of the Federation of BC Writers Literary Writes Contest 2020

published in WordWorks 2020 vol II