On the patio at a desert retreat center, I wait.  Not for God, like Simone Weil, but for a hummingbird.  This hummingbird loves one small bare branch on the woody ocotillo in front of me.  Not the next small branch, just the one.  I want the hummingbird to come.  I wish the hummingbird would come.  Oh—the hummingbird has come.  I see his bright black eye, long straight black beak slightly curved at the end.   Now I want the hummingbird to leave.  What makes the hummingbird leave?  He twitters.  He twitches his small ruff, that black vent on the side of his neck.  He turns his head, first right, then left.  Listens.  Click of my camera’s shutter; footsteps and a human voice on a nearby path.  They don’t make him leave.  The breeze?  My hands slithering around the camera body?  A blink of my eyes?  He’s gone.  I wait for him to come back.  Sometimes he only hovers, nearby; othertimes he disappears for a few minutes.  Once he zooms past me, almost grazing my face.  Only when he whirs by do I see the green glint of his wings.  For an hour, I stand.  I am a silverhaired plant, calm, quiet like a saguaro, unmoving in the breeze.  I hardly notice my aching shoulders, left sock bunched under my heel, rocks beneath my sneakers.  Like Weil, I surrender.  I wait.