A Little Story of the Little Woodpecker

How much wood
would a woodpecker peck
till it drew blood from
rough bark?

Once upon a time
(so begins this rhyme)
a little woodpecker flew
through the woods.
Perched she upon a tree
and began to peckpeckpeckpeckpeck.

On the tree she perched and pecked
'til the tree bark specked and
   flecked.
On the forest floor the wood chips
   gathered
more and more and more ...

Let us turn now to another
   rhyme:

Once upon a time
a sapling grew and sprouted.
Still young and green, it
   doubted
it could withstand strong winds and
the sharp nips of hungry fawns.

But it did,
amidst countless beatings -
ferocious stormings and
mindless tramplings -
the supple shoot did grow and grow and
   grow
until a solid and sturdy
tree stood in its place
and deeply spread its roots.

So hard was its wood
and so tough and rough its bark that
no fearsome gust nor steely ax
   could smack or
hack or whack the tree till it had
been smashed or crashed or
   dashed.

This same tree the little woodpecker pecked
   and pecked and pecked.
Through the bark and into the wood,
she was the only little bird that could -
and would.
Thus, while the tree still stood, still
   stood,
from its protective bark and wood
it began to bleed ...
then bled, and bled, and
   bled.

Finally, the tree it groaned, and said,
“Little bird, do you know how you hurt
  me with your beak, and how you’ve made
   me bleed?”
In reply, the woodpecker merely continued
to peck and peck and
   peck.

Blood from the tree
trickled from its bark and
   dribbled down its trunk
like the juice of fat crimson berries;
blood that fell like hearts of rubies,
swollen tears like sweet red cherries,
drip-dropped, and sunk into the forest
   floor.

“Little bird,” said the tree again,
“little bird, why? Look, oh look,
 you are making me cry.”
But still the little woodpecker remained
mutely peckpeckpeckpecking.

More and more and more
the wood chips gathered on the forest floor;
more and more and more
sparkly rubies and sweet cherries poured forth.

Then, for the final time, the tree
it sighed and asked, “Why do you perch,
little bird, on my branch –”
                                          “Your arm,”
said the woodpecker bird.

“My –”
       “Arm,” insisted the little bird, twitting,
“Yes, yes, yes, your arm, your arm, your
   arm!”

Somehow, the tree it took a look;
That was how it understood.

Lo, there was no more a tree but
a woodpecker perched on an arm,
a bird on the arm of a girl.

No more a tree of sturdy trunk,
no raiment of rough bark around it
   clung:
only a slender girl, bare as the day
   she was born,
with skin more tender than a sapling’s
   shoots.
Skin so soft and tender, it bled
where sharp claws and beck were still
   hooked.

Said the girl to the woodpecker,
“Little bird, little woodpecker bird,
  why are you still perched on my arm?
  You still hurt, still hurt, still
   hurt me.”

The little woodpecker was silent and still,
but the girl thought she could hear it,
   and listened
until she began to smile.
Said she then, “Rest awhile - stay
forever if you would.
                                       You
have made me human, made me feel -
but I have so much more to learn
I am ready to bleed
   a river mile.
                           Come, little
woodpecker bird, stay perched
   upon my arm.
We have such a ways to go,
and you still have so much to
   teach me, to
show.”



Oh, how much wood
would a woodpecker peck
till it drew blood from
rough bark?

Only the little woodpecker that had
   would know.
Only the little woodpecker that would.

Only the little woodpecker had
   understood.


Image copyright Lisa Alisa



28^th - 30^th November 2006

when

when you need me
do not tell me no

when you hurt me
i will not say so

when you leave me
do not let me go

Mere Words

For Jessica, in memory of Yohan Anthony
1st November 2006 - 1st November 2006

Words fail me, fail you -
they could not bear the weight
of your immeasurable loss, your
  crushing grief;
they could not carry across the distance
  of miles and moments
the relief or ease I desperately wish
  to give.

      Should one wonder about what
        might have been?
      Is the world of speculation
      preferable because it sustains endless
      possibilities in perpetuality,
      that a brief four-hour life here
      would then be lived out there
      in eternity?

Words fail you, fail me -
inadequate, hackneyed vehicles for conveying
the consuming confusion of emotions
  churning within.
Words - mere words - fail
always in times like this,
tongue-tied in the face of grief.

                                                       Come,
let the cloud of silence absorb these tears,
grow heavy and gray with the immensity
  of their anguish and heartache,
and burst out, at last,
with stuttering raindrops
that would speak for me and weep
  for you.

Reading

I realized, this morning, on the upper deck of the bus, almost everybody was reading, hidden behind undulating waves of wings in an aviary of literature:
the broad expanse of the newspapers’ staid gray wings;
the bright, chatty, glossily colorful feathers of the
   magazines;
the books’ busy, nondescript brown plumes speckled
   black with words.

Settling into my seat I too began to read -
turning over the pages
   of the open book of your face
underlining the fringe of lashes
   bordering your eyes
finger-reading your life story
   from the contours of your features
tracing the lines on your palms in an attempt
to discover the conclusion of our love story -

My reading was incomplete - cut short
when I arrived at my destination -
but so does our tale remain unfinished.
I think there might still be quite a ways
   to its ending -

What say you we add a few more chapters
   of mystery, exploration, and of love?

It would make for an enjoyable novel in those lazy Saturday afternoons where we would half-drowse, half-browse, and nod off,

                                        our book perched
on our laps, wings spread, ready to take off
into the neverwhere of our dreams, in search of
a brand new chapter.

Love Poem

Write me a poem, you say, your eyes bright with
  enthusiasm.
    A poem? But I am not a poet; I don’t know how to!
Write me something anyway, you insist, something that
  rhymes ...

‘Something that rhymes’?

                                                The way your name rhymes
with the chimes of the clock,
the click of the key in the lock,
the knock-knock-knock of your knuckles
   on the door of my heart?

                                                The way your breath
is the sonnet you breathed on my cheek,
the song you shaped on my lips,
the dip-slip-trip of your tongue
   in the house of my mouth?

                                                  The way your being
harmonizes every dissonance in the world,
synchronizes every assonance on this earth,
the way your just being

                                           brings about a singular cosmic
rhyme of love of love of lovelovelove
below, between, all around, above,

                                                              a universe
of rhyming prose and verse that I can never get
enough enough enough
of.

      You are the poet, the poem,
the poetry in motion, the
Geetanjali of love, my love,

not me.

Sitting in the bus beside you

Sitting in the bus beside you
I wondered what the person
sitting behind us would think:

there we were in similar white tops
that left our shoulders and backs bare;
on our napes hung two identical black bows
of the leather thongs of our necklaces;
down each of our backs hung the long
black ponytails of our hair -

do you think whoever saw the two of us
would think we were sisters or cousins?

Or, I added slyly, mother-and-daughter?

Oh you laughed.
I leaned forward and rested my elbows on
the handrail of the seat in front of us,
half-turned just to watch you laugh.

Do you think so?

You laughed in reply.
You laughed, reached out and traced
a lazy finger down my spine,
let it get caught on my back of my halter-neck,
tugged down playfully;
then you pulled the back of my blouse
   back up in place.

Then you smirked.

What do you think?

I laughed.

How could I have been so silly to think we
would even look alike, despite our attire?

Your strong face, strong jaws,
sharply arresting features;
my soft round bland one.
Your hair is all lively with when-she-was-bad-
she-was-horrid little girl curls;
mine’s a frizzy limp fly whisk.
Your bared shoulders rubbing against mine
are milk chocolate to my white chocolate.

But - somehow, in one way or another -
we match, fit into each other’s skin,
perfectly.

The way the trail of inky black stars
down your back leads to, and stops at,
exactly where my feathery fern unfurls.

how incongruous

that the sun is shining stubbornly
through crystal-bead curtains of the rain

that i am sitting at Kentucky Fried Chicken’s
eating the Colonel’s Fish & Chips meal

how incongruous
when i am anywhere

without you

untitled

saturday afternoon, on the beach

as my fingers wander along the warm sandy beach of your body a fluid surge of your arm sweeps me in closer
i find the conch of your lips and put my ear to it
let the gentle breeze of your breath wash over me
as formless whispers shape into airy words buoying me
faraway up high to the dreamy atmosphere of your slumbering thoughts and effervescent dreams

come
let me cocoon the two of us with the blanket of my hair
purchase privacy for you and me

a private universe of our own

saturday:sunday

when the midnight of your hair slips off
then the aurora of your visage dawns

but when you let raise the lids of both your eyes
what midnights, what mornings, what days, what weeks?

like the twin reflections in your pupils
that merges into a single image

   everything melds into one eternity
   when i look at you





monday

i miss you
our universe misses your presence

even the rain drops that hurl themselves
at the window-pane this morning
slip and slide so swiftly together
   every single one seeking another
forming crystal rivulets that somehow
manage to develop
on the canvas of the window-pane
into a picture of you

Untitled

May the first eyes to close
be yours.
May the first lips to exhale the last sigh
be yours.
May the first heart to flutter off
be yours.
May the first body to burn in the pyre
   of love’s fire
be yours.

And may mine be
the eyes that weep for loss
the lips that kiss cold lips
the heart that beats in vain
the shoulder that bears the dead weight
   of remembrance instead.

May the one to walk the last leg of the journey
   alone
be me

not you.