Today at the dVerse Poetry Pub the Quadrille prompt is “swift.” Because I had been bird watching this morning, I thought I would give this 44 word poem a try. Then I started looking at swift’s definitions and synonyms (like I do) and found the noun definitions very interesting. The birds that are called swifts are closely related to hummingbirds and are also the cave bird in Asia that make the nests for nest soup.

A very vocal hummingbird started hanging out in my cherry-plum tree this winter. He’s always trying to show off by making a loud, sharp chirp. I don’t know how well he’s doing, but I’ve seen three hummingbirds looking at each other in my tree recently. I love that he perches at the tip of the very tallest branch, attempting some minuscule dominance.

Swiften

tiny
humming-
bird, a swift’s
closest relation, chased
from his perch in the cherry-plum’s
top branch by three sparrows wanting, but he’s not gone
a snappy chirp and he dive-bombs, headlong, a kamikaze at breakneck,
dispatches the intruders and poses, prominent against the clouded sky