TheBanyanTree: brown creeper

[Jena Norton]

I felt like I was with you and the dogs!
 
Jena Norton
k


>________________________________
> From: Mike Pingleton <pingleto at gmail.com>
>To: Banyan Tree <thebanyantree at lists.remsset.com> 
>Sent: Thursday, December 5, 2013 5:11 AM
>Subject: TheBanyanTree: brown creeper
> 
>
>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.
>
>
>