Mdf CC BY-SA 3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)
Long moments
Watching the hairy woodpecker
Making her way
Up the burnt and blackened ponderosa
From recent wildfire
Bark flicking off
Probing, insistent pecking
While the figures and shadows
Of turkey vultures
Cut across sky
On this promontory
Ridge with afternoon updraft
And views
out over
The great valley
Even to the Coast Ranges.
Upholder of the way
Keeper
Of the practice
Grooved deep in instinct
Buddha
To my bodhisattva
I vow
To listen
To your braaap-bra-da-dap
As intently as to
A temple bell
Calling
To prayer.
15 November 2019
Kentucky Ridge, 2300’
Moon past full, waiting for rain
Mountaineity 
Wonderful.
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Yes, the birds eternal song juxtaposed by the scared forest is ominous in the immediate but beautiful in the longer view….
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The woodpecker’s drumbeat, calling us to attention, to see, yes, the threat of wildfire all around us in this area of the Sierra Foothills, and, yes, also the renewal of things, the place fire has in the natural system, the persistence of life, even the unnamable shared moment of being here. And as the onlooker, the drumbeat makes me ponder, unlike the woodpecker herself, who is the rhythm and fabric, my place in it all. Thanks, Amigo.
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Your sense of the sacred and expression thereof in the everyday world of nature, and of this denizen in particular, is sorely needed in our world today. Thank you for drawing our attention to the natural “grain” in our lives, if we only open our senses to hear, smell, taste, touch, and see of what we are all part of and belong to.
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