February 24, 2026

hummingbirds **

Last night, during the blizzard, I was on the living room floor with my neighbors’ young children, assembling a jigsaw puzzle that featured a quartet of puppies and a multicolored soccer ball. We did it in no time, high-fiving each other on the rug. Earlier, we’d played the electric piano all at once and I was surprised by how gentle they were on the keys. I pressed “record” and we listened back to what we’d created, then migrated to the dinner their father had prepared—chicken schnitzel and roast potatoes (thinly cut) and a salad tossed with toasted pecans—and their mother told us about their recent trip to Costa Rica. That morning, before the snow began in earnest, I was on Horse Jockey Lane, putting Patricia’s receipts in piles to clear the kitchen counter. Somewhere underneath the paperwork, there was a small Whoopee Cushion in its original packaging and Patricia asked me if I wanted it, and I did and tucked it in my jacket pocket. That afternoon, I added a sachet of instant hot cocoa and gave the cocoa and the cushion to Gilly, who’d just turned 10 a few days before. I imagined a whole winter going by like this, chicken dinners and spontaneous gifts, puzzles and soft-keyed music, diminishing piles and stories about far-off places where a stray cat could become a pet for two weeks and your parents took you surfing for the first time. Yes, the price of heating a house was skyrocketing. The news was a battering ram. There were too many walls and not enough bridges. Any day could bring its own searing brand of devastation—pick your poison. But I can’t get Noam’s high notes out of my mind, or how Alma held the puzzle box in triumph, or the sound of the Whoopee Cushion in the hands of a 10-year-old, or how, no matter how hard it’s snowing, there is always some bird circling overhead, looking at our swirling world from a distance.

* This prose poem is inspired by a Facebook update I read recently by a friend, Chloe” “I’ve been angry, sad, wildly anxious, fighting against all of it. And there’s no inspirational ending here. But today? Today was perfect. I’m with a dear friend in a tiny town in southern Arizona that’s known for its hummingbirds.”