Tonight as the moon draws its arc
through the stars and fog thickens
on the bay, a hummingbird
sits on her nest in the fuchsia plant

warming her one almond-shaped egg.
My adult children, home for a holiday,
strum guitars in the living room
and I wonder how many other mothers

are here on this little plot of land: possum,
mouse, raccoon? There must be spider
mothers here, too, and mother worms.
But I’ve seen this hummingbird, how

she sits on her nest as though in a boat
sailing on the breezes of spring and into
the fogs of night. I remember how I kept
my own offspring warm in my womb

as they turned into babies, and then
became the two adults making music
in their childhood home. Soon the egg
will hatch and a tiny being will emerge,

wet and scrawny, and it will grow
so big that one day the nest will be too small
and Mother will move out, flying back
every half hour to feed the hungry little beak.

My children themselves have moved away;
now they’re the ones who must fly back
on holidays, guitars and laundry in hand,
returning to the nest to nourish their mother.


© by Tamara Madison.
Used with the author’s permission