Pileated
His hand is in the rapid hammering
as if his touch still carpentered my world,
shaping with router and band saw
the wood that grew from the black humus.
His eye is in the black seeing centered
in this flying aimed at fulfilling hunger
from what tunnels or bores into the trees,
just as his sight straightened the cut with
right angles measured by steel square.
His voice is in the near-mad laughter
of being freed into feathers, unknowing
forever in the reincarnation of spring
from migrations beyond these woods,
like the gentleness his wit became when
he had moved three times past death.
I sit on our porch each morning, waiting
his return from the night as a shadow
flying from nothing into the something
of my seeing, hearing. His presence
is fantastic, like the brief half-memory
of last night’s dream before the sunlight
chases it into the very darkest green.
