Pileated Woodpecker in Flight (David Mintz, photographer), Sonnet #273

They say his lost cousin, ivory-billed,
Once chopped down a sycamore and when locked
In a cabin with a bobcat, he killed
The beast with a stab, flinging splinters, knocked
A hole in the door and flew. Man, he mocked.
I don't believe his laughter is extinct.
The pileated's eternal drumming
Is always distant, like tiny thunder.
He's flown right over me. I flinched. I blinked.
His loping flight, black and white wings strumming
The forest light, is the end of wonder.
Here he's caught, head turned around and under,
Flying, crest upside down -- impossible.
Yet, a thing of feathers, flesh, blood, and bill.

Pileated Woodpecker (Alice Guerin), Sonnet #260

Complacencies of the dead tree,
Every inch of bark hiding ants.
In bare patches a filigree
Of rectangular holes. He rants
And drums, but always at a distance --
The hardest god damn bird to see.
I followed him once by a stream.
I could not get close until I
Stepped into the water, thigh high.
To him I ceased to seem to seem.
Above, he ripped a branch apart,
Hungry savagery, like art
From a chisel, mallet, and drill.
For hours, I watched him kill, eat, kill.

The Pileated Woodpecker

Fly-fishing,

I stand mid-stream and thigh deep,

line trailing.

Fleet shadow on the water . . .

up,

the bird

drops on wind, lands in a birch. I’ve

never seen

one before. No thought of fish now.

For full ten

minutes I gape.

He stays.

I

step on land

careful to keep the tree he’s in

in focus.

He hops behind the trunk as

I circle.

A full circle

and no bird.

Three dull taps.

Three more. He’s in

another tree

behind me.

He falls, drops across the river,

twice beats wing,

lights on a dead beach.

I am soon

waist deep ten feet beneath him.

He must fear the threat from land,

not water.

Now I am his and see

all

of him clear:

the blood crest and zebra throat,

the black sheen

of his back, the stiff feathers

he grasps bark

with,

crampon-like,

dangling

underneath.

Infinitely patient he is

listening.

Infinitely insistent,

he hammers

in threes and sevens and eights,

each

beat

stressed.

Something not

one man in all the world could do.

He chops from two sides just like a

lumberjack.

Bark chips and wood dust

rain down

on my head.

A hand-shaped

patch he clears of bark then drills

a thumb hole,

then seems to give up (or has tongued

the gummy larvae)

and moves on.

Imagine

that sticky membrane sheathed in iron.

All this is

repeated and repeated and

nothing quells

his hunger

or blunts his intent.

He has mind:

curious, cruel, incisive,

reasoning—

he solves problems, remembers,

is cunning

(if not wicked), devious, his

consciousness

a thing that has come before and

after me.

I do not hear his wild call

even once.

Leaving first,

I take no pleasure

but rightness.