my father sees a hummingbird 

he sees a hummingbird in the churchyard
while he is planting his fingers & pieces
of his tongue. i come with him.
he shows me how to use
a pairing knife to cut off just
the edges of yourself. never too much.
never too little. he points to the ferns,
twelve of them. "one for each apostle"
god does not live here
but the priest does. he sometimes comes out
to join us. bending in the dirt.
his papery skin. he wears a straw hat
which looks funny with his black clothes
& his priest-collar. when my father
sees the hummingbird he does not tell me.
he watches it all by himself.
the hummingbird is not a hummingbird
but an angel. when it is gone he gestures
to its vacancy. he says, "there was a hummingbird."
i spend the rest of the afternoon searching
for it. soil beneath my fingernails. 
i go to the butterfly-laden bushes & even
to the sick-smelling white flowers. no hummingbirds.
i sometimes wonder if my father invented the creature 
to have some peace. to rid himself for a few minutes
of his persistent shadow, me. i prefer though
to imagine that he savored the moment.
that the creature had a green iridescent crest. that
she drank deeply of the flowers that he planted 
& that he asked the creature to take him with her.
to paint his face her fuchsia. to let him leave
behind all the knuckle-tight days.
to give him a nest away from it all
where the weeds pull themselves. instead, he stayed.
took me to the church bathrooms
to let me wash my hands when we were done.
i never found a hummingbird in the churchyard
but i never stopped looking every time we came back.