Woodpecker

I hear you, my diligent little friend
tapping away in the old oak - so persistent, so consistent;
a sweet choreography to each new dawn
and reminder of all creaturely purpose...

The sound is a tide ebbing and surging
in rhythmic urgency
evoking some primordial sense in my gut
a recognition, familiarity
and I ponder: do you resonate to the babble of human voices
even differentiate between tones and intentions?
Associate us with the thump of axe, whirr of motor
or yap of accompanying sheep or lap dog,
With danger or food?

Unlike the unlucky pheasant
aimlessly blundering about
bred heinously, in grotesque profusion
to feed, not bellies but the trigger-happy craze of the bullet;
they might take alarm at the sound of shot
if they weren’t to be too slow or late.

When I loll by the river, under the wooded hill
I hear your cousins busy in the branches
the echo of their carpentry
harmonic with the wood-pigeons lullaby
and it stirs a sensory memory from baby-hood
of the rooks cawing in the beeches
their raucous matins smudged and
symphonized by the early mist.
I can surely still see those tiny finger
spread-eagled with ecstasy
-a fleeting taste of Eden imprinted
enduring, not just a life-time, but threaded through racial memory
as long since those gawky creatures found how to fly,
gathered together and evolved their linguistic croak;
and as long as an antediluvian forebear had ears to hear
and I now embody,
with a quiver up my spine and throat
temporal distances annulled - yet strangely, the medium!

When a bird cocks its head
with a bright eye, assessing,
sharp and full
not only with the instincts and awareness of survival
But with something else, sapient
reaching far back into the genome
- a kindof knowing that may recognize who and what;
extrapolate, discern.
I celebrate this alien otherness.
The honour of our elemental connection.
You tap, I hear.

I vouch the emptiness between both space and time
are brim.