Woodpecker

To dig an inch he bangs
with everything he's got, bug-zaps
the stump's glut with barbed tongue

and publishes no caw or canticle,
only a paradiddle of discovery, dead tock
among the limbs. Backporch

suet's his junket in Fat City,
upside down bender after the daily hack
at dry forms with the pick of himself

face up into bark's foolscap, the beat
of labor sometimes all there is to eat.

Copyright © 2009 Harry Bauld All rights reserved
from Southern Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission