Mystery

For Ned

I don’t know why hummingbirds,
sparks of joy we love to watch,
refuse to share with one another
the feeder with its plastic flowers
hung from clothesline on our deck,

or what night creature plucked
the blooms, revealing holes through
which he drank to leave the feeder
emptied, stained, dangling from
its fragile hook, or why I wrote

when we first met, I’ve met the man
I’m going to marry, thinking you were
like my father (you both were sailors
after all), not knowing then how wrong
I was, and how right to marry you, and

how these many decades later despite
the mystery that remains, I clean, repair,
refill the feeder with nectar that I made
today, and sit with you in evening light,
delighting in the birds’ return.