Hummingbird and Star

Whether we sit hip to hip on a boulder

in the middle of Roaring Brook-

our feet cooling in the rush of water;

or whether we picnic in a hayed meadow,

my head in your lap, looking up at

summer sky. That simplicity

is what we try to live out of-

but promise me you will remember

the hummingbird pollinating those blue

irises purpling the banks of the reservoir-

what we find in each other's face

that expands like the light of a star.

- Wally Swist

Wally Swist's most recent poems are scheduled to appear in Alimentum: The Literature of Food, Angel Face, Appalachia, Lalitamba, and the 30th anniversary issue of Puckerbrush Review. Blue Moon Press will issue his poem "Ode to Elizabeth Park" as a limited edition letterpress broadside. His most recent volume of poetry, "Mount Toby Poems," was published by Timberline Press in a limited letterpress edition in 2009. He was chosen as one of seven poets from New England and New York to read their work in the 40th Anniversary Northeast Modern Language Association Convention in Boston in February 2009. A recording of a poem from his reading in the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival is archived at npr.org. He is a recipient of two Artist Fellowship Awards in Poetry from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts (1978 and 2003) and was awarded writing residences at Fort Juniper, the Robert Francis Homestead, on three separate occasions (1998, 2003-2004, and 2004-2005).