In they come, the Harpy-like great flappers,
a pair of pileated woodpeckers.
Like us, a faithful couple.
The male announces their arrival
daily at 3 with his harsh crow-call
across the ash treetops. They stay
an hour or so to peck apart
the strangle-vines of bittersweet
we say we’ll thin someday to save the tree.
This is life in the Slow Lane in the country.
We put out so lbs. of birdseed weekly,
five of suet, where people are not.
It’s January. Two feet of snow protect
the straitened ground. Deer have leapt
my garden fence and eaten clean the row
of Brussels sprouts that drooped there, armless
sentries. A mild one-lane flow
of creatures, mostly coyotes, let us know
they’re foraging all night, nose
to the wild turkey tracks that skitter
around the frozen pond’s perimeter.
Today my chestnut horse stands on
the geographic center of the pond.
He was born here, seven winters
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