Woodpecker and Birch

Woodpecker caresses the Birch with his beak.
It’s a language long spoken, this language they speak.
Is he like a doctor with message forlorn?
Does he query her symptoms?
Is her skin taut or torn?
Is she infested? It’s his job to know.
Will he tap her being?
Wormhole her creamy skin?

Redheaded, he drills her,
Tap-tapping semaphore
(long legend, long lore).
And others hear too or see and alight
For their share of her treasure
Her lifeblood’s sweet syrup.

And she feeds them unflinchingly
generous in her decline:
wasps, moths, bees and flutter-bys,
hummingbirds exotiques,
squirrels who can fly.

Yet it is only her suitor, her physician Woodpecker
Who consistently, diligently attends her.
He excises her loose flakey skin with his beak.

She allows him this liberty…what choice, she?
this patient patient: her skin’s gripped by his feet!
Around and round he works, his surgery begun.
His precision exact; his work ethic strong.
Her being is bored. He mines her unmercifully.

The scar? A necklace. A choker of love and need.
A destructive yet beautiful gift.
His tattoo gives succour to himself and to others.
Her piercings weep.

Yet greedily, always gently licked away.

Birch will live to see many more a sunny day but…
there is no cure.
Her death knell’s been heard
In his rat-ta-ta-tap.