Squirrel, Toad, Hummingbird

Colin Vanderburg

Journeyman squirrel, untested on twigs,
caroms across that cedar of heart-
shaped enclosures and dumbass scrapings.
He had a bucktoothed buxom girl but
now takes his gumdrop scrotum solo.

A toad has found a limiting principle.
On narrow grounds, with digressive sprouts.
Astaire case. Nude but for top hat, cane, spats.
He of sterner stuff, originalist on a happy peninsula,
took a big slug and hit the dance floor.                                   

If you slice this hummingbird in two, its halves
will whir away, and every glasslike blur
of wing and throat divide
into smaller darts of light
until only a dim confetti, afloat
gives you the glory of being fled from.