Woodpecker

                                               -for Will

Head already resembling

blunt force trauma, 

wings tucked at sides like an undertaker’s jacket, 

a woodpecker lays dead on a bed 

of last year’s leaves, 

both victims of time’s carnage, 

both soon to repopulate the soil’s university, 

smart sprigs, timid shoots of future seasons. 

Egg shells coming to harden in a mother’s body, 

here lies a father, a husband born to 

knock the spirits out of a maple or oak, 

eyes blinded in death by the insect tribes 

wounded by his primitive appetite, 

blue beak still, silent, amid

the roar of progress. 

-  Cheryl A. Rice