Joyas Voladores. Spanish for “Flying Jewels.” According to Doyle, is what “the first white explorers in the Americas called them.” This poem is very capturing in the form of how true it is. In Joyas Voladores, the contrast between the hummingbird and the whale is symbolic to how as humans, people live our life. This can be shown by the following: the heart rates, heart sizes, and lifespan. Abraham Lincoln said, “In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.” 

Doyle begins his poem by describing the hummingbird and informing the reader about its characteristics. While being the smallest bird, they thrive to survive in their world. Struggling each day. Not knowing when it could be their last. Their hearts run at a rate of “ten times per second” (Doyle 2). Doyle describes their rate as “an eye-popping rate” (27). This illustrates and allows us to get a picture of how powerful and swift it is. People can focus on being like the hummingbird living life so quick and not stopping a moment to cherish or admire the small things that are going on around us. The rate at which humans living can be defined on the things they achieve or accomplish. If people live as each day was their last, their rate would be as that of the tortoise as Doyle (35) mentions. Maybe then their choices would be wiser and made with more care and thought put into it. 

Next are the words: heart size. Animal’s heart size depends on their overall size. The hummingbird being small has the heart size of a pencil eraser. On the other hand, the poem mentions the blue whale having the heart size of a room. Weighing at 7 tons making it the largest animal who ever lived. This maintains the rhythm to the poem by having that connection of talking about the heart. The author continues to elaborate on this idea about how people can live their life. The symbolic meaning behind the heart size is that depending on the size of heart for animals determines how they manage to survive or the resources they need to fulfill their life. As humans this can relate as to how people decide to grow internally. By feeding one’s mind positive things and giving it its proper exercise, just like people’s bodies, can benefit us on the long run. Hummingbird hearts, because of their heart size, has to be made of different structure and have to fight for it to function to the max. “It’s expensive to fly.” states Doyle. For people to carry with one’s life people also have to pay a price. For example, a student who strives for having good grades has to sacrifice his/her self by putting their grades above their hobbies or things that are fun for him/her. 

Finally, lifespan. There are many factors which would take pages that could affect our lifespan or determine how long one live. However, the poem mentions that one is given approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. If one lives them slowly like the tortoise, one can live for a very long time or like the poem mentions, live shortly like the hummingbird. If one decides on making good decisions and feeding our minds what it really needs, one can live the life one want to. Again, for everything one wants to accomplish one have to pay a price. For religious people, that can be here or in the afterlife. How long one wants to live can depend on what one wants to live for as well. Nothing is sure in this life but one can make it what one wants to if one makes the decisions and commitment it takes. In ourselves lies a world, a world that is able to show itself on the outside. Like a field, it can harvest crops that will benefit not only our path but others around us. Also, another meaning one can make out of it is that our life is limited. One is only going to be in this world for a short time before that person stops living. 

Doyle uses the contrast between the hummingbird and the whale just like other fables such as the tortoise and the hare, and many more to demonstrate that there are different paths or that our decisions bring forth certain consequences. One can be like the whale and grow to be a great, enormous, and prosperous person; or be like the humming bird, living at an immense speed. At the end, everyone has the same chance just like one all have two billion heart beats to spend. The question is how are one going spend them? The poem ends talking about no matter how one shelters up or brick up oneself, one were made to be broken even by “a women’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, he brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.”(Doyle lines 71-76). The arrangement in those sentences has a flowing rhythm to which it captures the reader’s eyes to stay reading until the last word. Overall, with everything together, the heart rate, heart size, and lifespan that Doyle uses to compare the hummingbird and the blue whale can be used to and applied to human lives.  These are factors to deciding on how one will make decisions and how they can affect us and also people around. While not worrying about what lies ahead of us can be both damage and benefit one depending on our choices or decisions.
