February 25, 2014 by Dave Bonta

How to tell the woodpeckers

This entry is part 32 of 91 in the series Toward Noon: 3verses

If it calls often,
it’s a hairy woodpecker,
less often: a downy,

never: an ivory-billed.
Each year the ground grows simpler
and the sky more complex.

Right over there,
in a hollow locust tree,
a hive of wild bees used to sleep.

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I live in an Appalachian hollow in the Juniata watershed of central Pennsylvania, and spend a great deal of time walking in the woods. Here’s a bio. All of my writing here is available for reuse and creative remix under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. For attribution in printed material, my name (Dave Bonta) will suffice, but for web use, please link back to the original. Contact me for permission to waive the “share alike” provision (e.g. for use in a conventionally copyrighted work).

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