Ah, wilderness!

No, we're not referring to the Eugene O'Neill comedy. but to our above average day for interesting happenings. This morning a downy woodpecker managed to get itself enclosed in the screened-in patio. With the assistance of a plastic lawn rake and more patience than is typical for me, I managed to encourage and direct it back into the great out yonder. From what I could see, any trauma on the bird's part was more emotional or psychological than physical.

downy woodpecker on deck railing

Photo by J. Harrington

Later this morning, as the Better Half [BH] and I were headed off on a typical round of Sunday errands, we spotted a fisher [id by BH] that had just crossed the road in front of us. We weren't quick enough to grab any pictures but the sighting was a thrill. It reminded me of when the BH first discovered and introduced me to a singer named Carrie Newcomer and her rendition of a song called The Fisher King. Newcomer is one of several very talented individuals that hail from the same general area of Indiana. The other two with whom we're acquainted, familiar, and sometimes friendly are the singer/songwriter/musician/teacher Krista Detor, who was kind enough to include one of our poems in a book published a few years ago to accompany an album of her songs [Flat Earth Diary], and Scott Russell Sanders, who we had the pleasure of meeting several years ago at a writing conference, sponsored byMinnesota's The Loft Literary Center. One of our personal favorites of Sanders, Wilderness Plots, has been turned into a performance in collaboration with Newcomer and Detor and others. Each of these memories and reminiscences were triggered by a brief sight of a lithe brown animal sniffing its way among the bases of some roadside cedar trees. Memory banks truly are random access stores, aren't they?

The Woodpecker Keeps Returning

By Jane Hirshfield

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.

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