This is in response to a prompt from Radha Marcum’s workshop Write Your Life in Poetry offered by the Boulder Public Library.

Red-naped Sapsuckers, Early July

you can’t help but hear them
the insatiable insistent peeping
hungry beaks open and shut
almost as fast as hummingbird wings
inside a perfectly round O
perforating smooth beige aspen bark

with binoculars you can peek inside
and after a few seconds of dark blank staring
a small striped head and desperate beak
pop up into view
like the start of a puppet show

now and then she collapses
then eventually works her way
eye-level with her window on the world again
her pleas the same tempo and volume
wherever she is

the dogged parents fly in and out
red crests and napes brilliant
against backlit aspen emerald green
on approach they issue a rough nasal call
swoop in, load the mouths
take a deep breath
look out toward their next dead tree to loot
then fly off with great up-and-down flap-glides

it gets easier
I want to tell them
you should talk to the hairy woodpeckers
just up the road
their handsome son just joined them
out in the trees
and he calmly plink-calls them
now and then while they hunt together
and enjoy each other’s company
while sometimes just listening
to the quiet ruffle of wind
through needles and feathers

but the ragged sapsuckers don’t have time
to even listen to our encouragement –
the little mouths never stop begging
and the hole is never filled