Pileated Woodpecker
Your territorial glockenspiel
broadcasting from our sprawling
maple’s newborn-jade fractals
spurs my hungering
not-me who lives in the belly
of everywhere that is neither
quite beneath my skin, nor
behind my spine, to prickle.
I love how you indulge my
taste for this hilarity I imagine
we share, with your wisecracks
piping from the neighbor’s dead hickory,
peppering my failures
to poeticize our wordlessness—
just as I loved you
that mid-morning last spring
when you appeared with a sunburst
in the overgrown grass by the back fence:
For in that myopic moment
of my divining your chickenhood—
your prodigious plumage,
tyrannosaur ancestry,
komodo dragon demeanor
& blood-red-combed regality—
the mortal soup brimming
with unnamable unknowns
condensed to a sating spoonful
of my need to know who I am
that I still know is everything
you precede & surpass.
Listen to Pileated Woodpecker here.
broadcasting from our sprawling
maple’s newborn-jade fractals
spurs my hungering
not-me who lives in the belly
of everywhere that is neither
quite beneath my skin, nor
behind my spine, to prickle.
I love how you indulge my
taste for this hilarity I imagine
we share, with your wisecracks
piping from the neighbor’s dead hickory,
peppering my failures
to poeticize our wordlessness—
just as I loved you
that mid-morning last spring
when you appeared with a sunburst
in the overgrown grass by the back fence:
For in that myopic moment
of my divining your chickenhood—
your prodigious plumage,
tyrannosaur ancestry,
komodo dragon demeanor
& blood-red-combed regality—
the mortal soup brimming
with unnamable unknowns
condensed to a sating spoonful
of my need to know who I am
that I still know is everything
you precede & surpass.
Listen to Pileated Woodpecker here.
Stephanie L. Harper grew up in Northern California, earned a BA in English and German from Grinnell College in Iowa, an MA in German from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an MFA from Butler University in Indianapolis. She is the proud mom of two extraordinary humans whom she raised to adulthood in Oregon, and she now lives in Indiana with the world’s most adorable husband and cat. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Red Wheelbarrow, Vox Populi, The Night Heron Barks, The Dodge, Laurel Review, Resurrection Magazine, Taos Journal of Poetry, Stickman Review, and elsewhere.
Pileated Woodpeckers are the largest North American woodpecker species. They are breathtaking beings; approximately crow-sized, with zebra markings, moustaches (black and red for males and just black for females), and magnificent, blood-red mohawks to put the entire history of punk rock to shame...This past May, I was graced by a brooding pair's visitations to my suet feeders almost daily, and even when I couldn't see them, I could hear their melodic wood-knocks and whoops of "laughter" nearby. Knowing such creatures is one of the most important things about being alive.
Pileated Woodpeckers are the largest North American woodpecker species. They are breathtaking beings; approximately crow-sized, with zebra markings, moustaches (black and red for males and just black for females), and magnificent, blood-red mohawks to put the entire history of punk rock to shame...This past May, I was graced by a brooding pair's visitations to my suet feeders almost daily, and even when I couldn't see them, I could hear their melodic wood-knocks and whoops of "laughter" nearby. Knowing such creatures is one of the most important things about being alive.