Sample Poems by Elizabeth Schultz

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Ruby-Throated Hummingbird

It is my summer muse.
Every year, we both return
to this one pavilion,
anticipating sustenance.
Daily I prepare its nectar,
sugar water funneled
into red plastic canisters,
hung on the pavilion roof.
But the bird feeds me.

For an instant, it perches
on a white pine branch,
its feathers tightly scrolled
as a green pine cone's scales.
Even pausing, the bird
pulsates and, too fast
for me to follow, unfurls
into electric green fuse.

Like haiku, so diminutive
a being zips vistas open.
Over protein and grit,
this bird chooses sweetness
and light. Sipping both
voraciously, it dangles,
bright pendant, above bushes.
Ferocious whisking sets
the leaves to quaking,
and in such furious flutter,
the bird dissolves in air.

I note its practical
elegance: a flashing eye,
feet stowed usefully away.
I must also imagine a nest
of moss, and a ruby red
heart, the size of my finger
tip, exuberantly palpitating.

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Squaw Creek

Beyond the knotted trees,
leafless this late November,
but flickering with sparrows,
out across the silvered marsh,
marked with bent lotuses,
where grebes and gadwalls
wend their way, dipping
and diving, are distant stretches,
lined with ducks and swans,

and the snow geese rising high,
over and above themselves,
in long, winding and unwinding
molecular strands, swooping
loops and twisting cylinders
of light, lifting and drifting,
suspended in mid-air, their
honks and wings pulsating
through me, as I lie spread-eagle
on the vibrating earth.

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This Frozen Land
For Carolyn Young

She saw the birds fly up:
gulls in a clatter of wings
and calls, rising from open
water, clamoring geese
following, lifting off from
a glare of ice. Her appearance
agitated them, the sound
of her shadow.

They stirred through the air
above her, escalating, spiraling,
the gulls scattering as if blown,
the geese struggling into frayed
formation. Diverging from her,
they stretched across the pale sky,
marking it with patterns of flight.

She had come for birds, and
stood now before the place
they had evacuated, the bit
of trembling water in front of
the sweeping, impervious ice.
Frost rimmed her nostrils. High
overhead remained, an eagle pair
spiraling, absorbed in space,
their heads glinting crystals.
Even they, she trusted, must
soon return to the frozen land.

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Divining the Birds

1
During December's last days,
as mild as May, it rained robins.
They fell from the sky in drops,
clustered in our cedars,
then plopped onto the ground.

They paused in mid-migration,
feasting on residual mulberries.
Worms had long since turned
underground. The birds stormed
around us, shitting, starving.

2.
By the river, it was reported
a red-tail hawk attacked a great blue,
his talons snagged the heron's back.
Lingering on late in the season,
the water bird stood meditatively

in the shoals when the hawk,
a stealth bomber, exploded among
her feathers. But in a last arabesque,
the heron swiveled her neck to stab
the enemy's speckled breast.

3.
At dusk, a million blackbirds flow east,
unfurling against a sky, mauve and gold.
No one bird puts a period to this endless
streaming. Tattered wakes of geese
merge into darkness.

Organs steam along the highways.
Bones are spaced along the shoulders.
Soothsayers abound, divining the remains
on earth's altars. None dares predict
how much longer hummingbirds
can negotiate the snow.

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Tales of the Wild

My story includes a crane.
Fishing among the reeds,
resting, pretending to be a stalk,
it did not intend to be in a story.
But rising up in a rush, the bird
bungled its way into my narrative.
Its immense wings fanned open,
close, took me up in their shadow.

Unpredictably, they appear:
deer at twilight on the lawn,
an eagle adrift above the highway,
coincidental characters, often
too remote for communication.
With their light choreography
and gravitas, they are startling,
spellbinding, and with each
encounter, I find my story revised.