Poetry Friday - Hot and Steamy

In keeping with the Mary Shelly theme of Wednesday, I had planned to offer up a little poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, but quite by accident, I came across another poem that made Mr. Shelley’s look like a 19th century pick-up line. So, to go with the hot and steamy weather we're having here in New Hampshire, here's a hot and steamy seduction poem by Pattiann Rogers.

The Hummingbird: A Seduction
by Pattiann Rogers

If I were a female hummingbird perched still

And quiet on an upper myrtle branch

In the spring afternoon and if you were a male

Alone in the whole heavens before me, having parted

Yourself, for me, from cedar top and honeysuckle stem

And earth down, your body hovering in midair

Far away from jewelweed, thistle, and bee balm;

And if I watched how you fell, plummeting before me,

And how you rose again and fell, with such mastery

That I believed for a moment you were the sky

And the red-marked bird diving inside your circumference

Was just the physical revelation of the light's

Most perfect desire;

And if I saw your sweeping and sucking

Performance of swirling egg and semen in the air,

The weaving, twisting vision of red petal

And nectar and soaring rump, the rush of your wing

In its grand confusion of arcing and splitting

Created completely out of nothing just for me,

Then when you came down to me, I would call you

My own spinning bloom of ruby sage, my funnelling

Storm of sunlit sperm and pollen, my only breathless

Piece of scarlet sky, and I would bless the base

Of each of your feathers and touch the tine

Of string muscles binding your wings and taste

The odor of your glistening oils and hunt

The honey in your crimson flare
And I would take you and take you and take you

Deep into any kind of nest you ever wanted.

Stop by My Juicy Little Universe for more great poetry.

Photo: Mukesh Srivastava