The Dirigible Balloon
Poetry for Children

Hummingbird

Hummingbird,
what’s the word?
I’ve memorized the tune.
The sunlight sings
with your shimmering wings
all summer afternoon.

All afternoon,
I hear your tune,
and soon I see you near.
A flickering flash--
you dart and you dash,
and then you disappear.

I’ll never know
just where you go
or when you will return.
I need you so,
for your faithful glow
is a spark that will always burn.

Oh, how you hum and how you hover!
You dive, you dip, and you recover--
each sip a celebration.
It isn’t a note
from your emerald throat.
It’s your singular vibration.

Suspended there before my face,
you are a jewel in a case--
a gift from sky to earth.

Hummingbird,
with every word,
I wonder at your worth.

About the Writer


Alan M Sugar

Alan shares his poetry in Decatur, Georgia where he currently resides. Now retired from teaching special needs children in the public schools of Atlanta, he works as a writing tutor at Perimeter College of Georgia State University. Alan writes many poems, and you can find some of them in the Atlanta Review, The Jewish Literary Journal, The Lyric, The Ekphrastic Review, The Awakenings Review, RFD and … the Dirigible Balloon.