It's Still Life

The Thimble and the Hummingbird

I. The Inheritance of Absence

I keep few things.
A silver thimble, a rocking chair,
and a preference for memory over monument.
Objects shed their stories like birch bark,
curling inward, fragile, ghost-scripted.
But the thimble holds the shape of her fingerprint,
the chair holds the curve of her spine,
and I —
I hold the space between.

II. The Ritual of Return

At dawn, in borrowed mountains,
with lemon, honey, and three cloves steaming,
I leaned into the wood she once leaned into,
and watched darkness soften
from indigo to ash to opal —
the sky unraveling night like a seam.

III. The Visitor

Then …a vibration in the air,
a jewelled blur,
a hummingbird suspended
an arm’s length from my face.
Ruby-throated, emerald-backed,
wings stitching time to stillness.
No thought passed between us.
No blessing was asked or given.
Only clear morning air,
and the mutual beholding
of one living thing by another.

IV. The Unspoken

It did not come for nectar.
It did not come as sign or symbol.
It came as a needle comes to thread,
to briefly connect what is
with what has always been.
And then, without ceremony,
it flew
leaving the silence more silent,
the light more light,
and my grandmother’s thimble
suddenly warm in my palm.

V. The Reveal

To the keepers of small things
To chairs that remember our shape.
Blessed are birds that pause in their frenzy
to say, without words:

You are here.
I am here.
This is enough.

And blessed is the dawn that clears not just the sky,
but the heart,
stitch by silver stitch,
breath by breath,
until what is left is not memory,
but presence.

For the moments that hover,
for the ancestors in the air,
for the love that needs
no object to endure.

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Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI. Poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2026.