Iridescence

Outside my window, a hummingbird speaks. Its voice is the same as the sunset–the same as the tossing of cedar boughs in the southwest breeze. I know it immediately, before I even see it. And when I look up, the hummingbird is hovering–the sun glinting off its feathers, just like the iridescence of an abalone shell I once found at the beach, just like the sparks of light in the Salish Sea, the bioluminescence that glowed with each kick of our legs; just like the moon setting into the water.