THE WINGED SPRITE

by Robert E. Petras

Time moves,
but I can’t see it budge,
like the morning fog cloaking my garden
as still as the suspended bird feeder above,
its liquid sugar like pink sand
suspended in time,
as still as the sock-hatted gnome
forever stuck in the act
of dumping a wheelbarrow,
as still and silent as the elf
curled snoozing under an orange mushroom,
as still as the mermaid in the pond,
topless, a model of one pose;
then there are cicada-winged fairies
frozen to tethers in the air.
Suddenly the gauzy horizon
is gilded by the sun and glides into blue.
A winged sprite appears,
a hummingbird, upon its throat a napkin of red,
body shimmering emerald, wings slurred blurring,
beak a sippy straw.
He hovers above the feeder
then dives and dips into the pink nectar
and figure-eights around
and around, flits, wheels and whirls
whiplashes backward, back
above the feeder
as though savoring the sweetness
and dives for more, boogying
his hummingbird boogie again and again
and in a wing beat is gone, a dot swallowed
by the sun—vanished—
like the pink sugar.

Time moved.