TheBanyanTree: brown creeper

[Mike Pingleton]

your thin, reedy whistle
is so often drowned,
but this dim early hour the town lies
dreaming, the crows still sleeping.

I hope to catch you in silhouette
if I am to catch you at all,
the trees black fractals against
a wall of tarnished clouds.

six-legged are summer’s children
and summer has foundered in the
sea of fallen leaves, but you know
where hides the thrips and midges,

the barley worm, the beetles in their
bark crevices.  cloaked in the black
you are ratcheting up the maple
like a clock-work toy, a steeplejack

on a hidden string.  hop then pause,
tail propped, probing cracks and holes
with your broom-straw beak, the
source of your thin, reedy whistle.

you weigh little more than moonlight;
the ground’s faint pull makes the tree
a mere rough road.  where the trunk
tapers you flutter-fall to earth,

lift your head and start upward anew.
this is your own hard way
and your bird heart hammers;
it is said just one thin spider

earns you muscle and gristle enough
to master another ascent.
I whistle for my dogs, we three have
our own dark trees to transit.