HUMMINGBIRDS AND PLASTIC FLOWERS

by John Henry Carrozza

It seems as if the days now are laughing more loudly than ever

before. Tree limbs are cracking the sky as if it were a windshield, sheathed

in ice, reflecting paratrooping flakes of snow . . . it never used to snow this

white of day, sweeping it under the carpet of the sun, replacing it with a

spangle of lights, like a vast city beneath a luminous fog. Often the dreamer

plays connect-the-dots and then shakes the sky like an etch-a-sketch when

he makes a mistake, each time trying to create a new constellation for the

heavens to call their own. Each time he feels as if he has it just right, but . .

. the face is never completed. He cannot remember it all at once, but only

in pieces, and then he loses his place, or morning raps softly on the door,

raising the horizon like a curtain and slipping the milk jars of daylight into

the world, erasing his celestial painting.

He can remember certain things, like the sound of rain, which he

He tries to remember her face. He sees it vaguely in the shapes of

clouds, the formations of migrating birds, in the stars. But never can it

come completely to focus in his mind. He wonders if it ever will, as often

as he wonders if his dream will ever end.

He remembers dreams. He remembers every dream he ever had

as if he were dreaming them all simultaneously. But he cannot freeze the

images as they hurry by, and he sometimes thinks he can see her there, but

then she is gone, and he begins to wonder if she was only a dream as well.

An airplane inches its way across the sky, leaving a trail of vapors

that seems to be pushing the craft to Denver, or New York, depending upon

one's perspective. He envisions passengers on the plane, looking down,

waving and holding a magazine, sipping from a plastic coffee mug and

glancing at their neighbors, motioning for them to look out the window, but

they do not, because they are asleep or busy with an electronic football

climb it instead and lean against the trunk and sit for hours, watching. He

would see the grasses bow in allegiance to the wind, and the bees as they

moved among the azaleas, and the hummingbirds hovering before the

honeysuckle on the garden wall. He would go there to think, and most of

all to dream. And he wonders if he dreaming now.

He remembers the time they first met. He was standing in line at

the theater. He cannot remember the movie, but it was a blustery day and

… wait, he thinks … it was The Philadelphia Story, and it was part of a

weekly matinee series … anyway, she was not at the movie house, but he

picked up a brochure that said a woman would tell his fortune and read the

thought better of it, thanked the woman and turned to leave. She had also

said that he would soon meet the woman of his dreams, and that this would

cause great conflict in his life. He thought that perhaps it caused more

conflict in his dreams, but nevertheless stepped out through a beaded

doorway and told the woman in the waiting room, sitting in a green-

cushioned chair, wearing a long, pleated skirt the color of lilacs topped by a

white knitted sweater and holding a copy of The Daily News that he had

been reading some minutes earlier, that she was next.

He almost recalls her face at this point, but instantly she is up and

through the beads, and he is outside waiting for her to come out, because he

believes in that instant when he looked at her that they had both fallen in

love in their minds, and that his was probably a good omen.

He remembers thinking yes, it was a good omen, in fact a

wonderful one, years later on a porch along some isolated stretch of

It is now the first day of May, and he sees a butterfly swoop down

to hover above him for several wingbeats, fighting the wind. The insect

flutters softly on and is followed by several dandelion seeds, propelled by

the same wind, and loving it.

When they are past, the clouds slow like a carousel winding

down, and the sound of bells rises and abates. The sky turns gold for a

moment as the sun glares upon the foot of the dreamer's bed.

And then a shadow floats across the sky, as a figure steps slowly

to his side. Her face is in her hands, and she carries a bouquet of flowers,

which smell like a perfume he once cherished.