Anna's Hummingbird

   Lucy Willow was the first to see her, that emerald flit of a thing, the Anna's Hummingbird. From her place by the window she let out such a yowl that Emma Munson dropped a pan of fresh bread dough to go see what the matter was with her "dear, dear Lucy 'Pussy' Willow." Emma then phoned Ira Horn, erstwhile mayor and ornithologist, or vice versa, and he in turn forwarded the news to Audubon in the City. Audubon explained that the poor lost soul, through some dysfunction of migratory memory, had wandered far from her California home, but given enough time would right herself and make her way back. But here she was for now, the object of boundless admiration and relentless observation. Folks from as far as Chicago and New Orleans came to see the Anna's Hummingbird, and convoys of motorists from nearby cities daily poured onto the streets of the village and spilled back into the countryside . . . until one morning the village woke to find her gone.

   Anna, my Anna, took it as a sign. She had wandered from the prairies of western Minnesota to our town one late October. There was already snow in Minnesota, while here the fields were greening with winter wheat. With some encouragement, she stayed. She believed that some part of the primitive brain that lay dormant in us all would now and then stir an individual to behavior of a migratory nature that was impossible to resist. No one knew where it would lead them. She never got quite settled here, however, and became increasingly melancholic over time. After nearly three years she decided Kansas did not suit her personality. How had she described it? Ah, yes, "humdrum". She had grown tired of the humdrum of it all.  Making humdrum love in a humdrum town to the humdrum call of summer frogs up and down the river . . . It was not her idea of happiness. We stayed up late that night. Drank wine. Cried a little. Made love and then made love again. When I woke later that morning she was gone.

--glwarren, 2014

But then someday when your poor heart

Is on the mend

I might just pass this way again

--Gordon Lightfoot, For Lovin' Me