Two brilliant black and white Woodpeckers
hitched up and down and circled and peered
and arched and flitted and jerked and bobbed
and crouched and flattened and swelled and lifted
and flaired and elongated and shrank and charged
and retreated and skittered and leapt and floated
around a youngish Sugar Maple Trunk,
never coming closer to each other than
a dozen woodpecker lengths.
the soul of the woodpecker is present and circling through these words