Contents | November 2002

More on poetry from The Atlantic Monthly.


The Atlantic Monthly | November 2002
 
Hummingbird

by Sue Standing
 
 .....
 
audioear pictureHear the author read this poem (in RealAudio)


 No matter how fast my heart,
yours beats faster.

What would ever
make you stay?

A rose named for Frédéric Mistral.
The Arctic Queen Nectarine.

Orchids in Malawi
(over four hundred species).

Kashmiri meadows, a perfume
that almost hurts.

Perhaps a miraculous shift
—red or dress or attitude—

would keep you hovering here
more than a millisecond touch-and-go.

No matter how fast my heart,
yours beats faster.

What do you think? Discuss this article in the Books & Literature conference of Post & Riposte.
Sue Standing directs the creative-writing program at Wheaton College and is the author of Amphibious Weather, Deception Pass, and Gravida. Her new collection of poems, False Horizon, will be published next spring.
Copyright © 2002 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; November 2002; Hummingbird; Volume 290, No. 4; 96.