"Hummingbird," by Rebecca Foust (Poetry '10)

2010 poetry alum Rebecca Foust was recently featured by the Poetry Foundation and Bracken Magazine. Read an excerpt of “Hummingbird” below:

My mother always told me
she would be back
and would be back as a hummingbird.

Very matter of fact, she was,
and it came up more than once,
as in every time we saw a hummingbird

which was a lot most Marches
in Pennsylvania when the redbuds
put on their frilly fuchsia pantaloons,

the birds in frenzied suspension
with their tongues deep in the blooms.
Mom said it again, once,

when she was actually dying.
I mean when she knew it and I knew it
and she knew I knew;

then such things could be said
even in the utter absence
of hummingbirds.

“Hummingbird,” by Rebecca Foust (Poetry ’10)