On hot afternoons, beside the blackberry canes that rose thickly from that wrecked place, I strolled, and was almost always sure to see the male hummingbird on his favorite high perch, near the top of a wild cherry tree, looking out across his kingdom with bright eye and even brighter throat. And then, on the afternoon I am telling about, as he swung his head, there came out of the heavens an immense growl, of metal and energy, shoving and shrilling, boring through the air. And a plane, a black triangle, flew screaming from the horizon, heavy talons clutched and lumpy on its underside. And I saw the small bird, in the sparkle of its tree fling its green head sideways for the eye to see this hawkbird, this nightmare pressing overhead. And, lo, the hummingbird cringed, it hugged itself to the limb, it hunkered, it quivered.
All narrative is metaphor.
It was merely a moment. The sun, angling out from the bunched clouds, cast one could easily imagine tenderly over the landscape its extraordinary light.