Pileated woodpecker

Now that I have seen you
what else is there, except
waiting to see you again?

A dead red leaf
hangs from a shedding tree
resembling you.

I saw a pileated woodpecker today!

I’ve been wanting to see one for a long time now.

I don’t even remember how I spotted him. I heard some laughing in the distance, but this one was silent. I think I saw movement up in a tall tree, and I locked onto a big black body and a tiny glimmer of red.

He bobbed his head back and forth, the way I’ve seen in so many videos.

He swooped down onto a tall, dead tree, shimmying up and down the bark, flashing his wings as he gained footing. He poked a speckle of holes in one section, then flew onto a very large hole that he or one of his friends must have built. He hopped in, and poked his head out at me as I watched him through my binoculars, his beak pointy and his red head glowing in a small ray of sunlight that broke through the forest canopy.

The leaves were gloriously yellow, orange, red, and green against a sky that was so blue, almost indigo.

Walking through the forest, I suddenly made eye contact with the black cartoonish eyes of a winter wren, a tiny brown borb with a tail that sticks up. A hawk – I think an immature cooper’s hawk – dark brown with a striped tail, suddenly perched onto a branch above us, and looked around with sharp yellow eyes. I saw him later, as I progressed through the forest, stooped on a fallen branch, perhaps scanning the ground for mice or voles.