Hummingbird at rest

If you have the kind of mind that whirs at high speed, and if people sometimes tell you you're overthinking something, as someone accurately told me today, and if you sometimes find your mind stilled and feel a deep peace come over you, just for a moment, as if someone pressed a reset button, then you know how surprising and grace-tinged this feels.

I often take a morning photograph, often of the view from my balcony. This morning the river and the neighborhood between the river and me were covered with a thick fog. My home is high enough that it usually overlooks such a fog, so I stepped out to take a picture of it. As I stood there with my iPhone poised, a hummingbird zoomed along and sat on top of its feeder. Facing me. 

We were five feet apart. We regarded each other for a few moments, long enough for me to snap a few pictures. It looked around. The shutter clicks didn't bother it. I fumbled my way from photograph mode to video mode, and managed mostly to look at it instead of the screen. After about 23 seconds of that, another hummingbird came up toward the feeder, and they flew away together. Almost as if the first had been waiting for the second. 

If you have a mind often in flight, then you know how surprising and grace-filled it is, to be, for a moment, a hummingbird at rest.