The Visitor

I've seen this little guy (or someone like him, I should say, because this is not my photograph!) here before, drawn by the coleus flowers on our deck. An iridescent-necked hummingbird so improbably tiny that each time I see him I think at first that I'm looking at an insect.

The hummingbird makes me think of one of my favorite essays, "Joyas Voladoras" by Brian Doyle, which begins: "Consider the hummingbird for a long moment. A hummingbird's heart beats ten times a second. A hummingbird's heart is the size of a pencil eraser. A hummingbird's heart is a lot of the hummingbird. Joyas voladoras, flying jewels, the first white explorers in the Americas called them, and the white men had never seen such creatures, for hummingbirds came into the world only in the Americas, nowhere else in the universe..."

And because this tiny bird brings an essay to mind I think of him as a muse, flying inspiration, bound to lead to a productive writing day. I hope.