The Woodpecker Keeps Returning

The woodpecker keeps returning
to drill the house wall.
Put a pie plate over one place, he chooses another.

There is nothing good to eat there:
he has found in the house
a resonant billboard to post his intentions,
his voluble strength as provider.

But where is the female he drums for? Where?

I ask this, who am myself the ruined siding,
the handsome red-capped bird, the missing mate.




Jane Hirshfield' s "The Woodpecker Keeps Returning" copyright © 2005 by Jane Hirshfield from After (Harper Collins, 2006). Reprinted with the permission of the author.