Zippingbirds

C Fitzpatrick, R M Berlin

When you said in your email that
Hummingbirds were zipping in your garden
I could see them
Hear them
For the first time ever
Real and not like on the television
I emailed you back and said
What a verb zipping is to describe
Your hummingbirds
     Darting
         Humming
               Zipping
We should call them Zippingbirds instead
And split the poem 50:50
Maybe even more for the verb and the
Inspiration and the fact that
They were in your garden

Chris Fitzpatrick, Dublin
Richard M Berlin, Massachusetts

Professor Chris Fitzpatrick is a Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist in the Coombe Women & Infants University Hospital and Clinical Professor in the School of Medicine UCD. Dr Richard Berlin is Senior Affiliate in Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. In September 2016 an excerpt from their play ‘The Fall – a play about the Holocaust in two acts’ was published in the Psychiatric Times (US).

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