Sigh

They open their wings,
flash patterns and colors,
fly from flower to flower.
I, with the dark bristles and many feet
of the former form,
inch along the ground.

Sometimes all I want
is two armfuls of air,
a fistful of sky.

The above poem is called “Transitions,” and I found it at the front of A Fistful of Sky by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, which I just started reading. I’m only on page 72, but I’m already smitten. Hoffman copyrighted the poem in 1997 and an earlier version of it first appeared in Bruce Coville’s Book of Magic II. I wonder which came first, the poem or the novel.