TheBanyanTree: brown creeper

[Teague, Julie Anna]

Just stunningly lovely, Mike.

Quoting Mike Pingleton <pingleto at gmail.com>:

> 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.
>