I love the barcode robe of the downy woodpecker
his scannable double checker garb, half ebony, half snow globe
impervious to device — no binocs or iPhone app can reveal his inner world,
swooping from eon to branch to furled bark, drilling his meal, sipping his sap
in late October, late in the day, midway to his winter haunt perfect bird, unimproved, paused in the yard tree,
version o.o. Downy, engrossed in myopic peck, you taunt
creatures like me who also poke and prod and clench and stroke and tap at god.
INFO
This poem appears in First Do No Harm: Poems by Julia Shipley, Honeybee Press, 48 pages. $15.
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2014.
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