Gary Campanella

LA Charm

A hummingbird hovers at the high branches of a live oak, while I wait for morning fog to clear, lean to the window, pick at my problems, and watch the tiny emerald-necked thing take off, alight, take off, and I wonder if its wings get tired.

The branchlets sway in a breeze that slips through my window, smelling of flowers, coarse from the ocean, wistful for stealing across the grime and sadness of America’s sprawling city of slumbering angels and personal demons.

The hummingbird moves away, haltingly off toward other trees or flowers or the other side of this tree, and I also turn away, step away from the window and the oak and my downtown view.

My house is rooted here like the tree, but I am unsteady when standing still, more at ease with the wind across this city, drafting up the hill where I sleep, to the patch of grass I defend from neighbor dogs, to the migration in my oak tree, to the glitter charmed with sandy grit across high desert ghost towns.

The oak tree makes its own dust, as do I, as do hummingbirds, and the breeze carries these away with the rest of it.