Sea Room

Woodpecker

Woodpecker Shame doused him when he looked in teased by my wallpaper, Bird of Paradise, in a shade too rich. I was sewing without needle or thread, a bit of vaudeville I employed against the sweltering day when nonsense overtakes strict privacy. There, in the double glass of my vanity, a trick mirror that multiplies the corners of a room so that every spider hatches four, I saw woodpeckers—a row of flames faltering like candelabra. I'm brightened by intrusions, pleased when I recall a hard name, when I find a lost guest in the hallways of daydreams. These brief visits seem honoring. But when I turned to face him, the branch sagged like a curtain wire and my guest, that ruffled weight, was gone. Later, while touching at chores or sitting with my circle, those bored, full-lipped duplicates, the near, the far, the disappearing, I heard his hammering, a battered alphabet of one or two sharp consonants, something prayerful and overworked like chipping a long name upon a monument. He tapped with tolerance, knocking on the smoked glass of abandoned property. I thought it was my door, a door between two worlds. Inspector of hollow hours, spy in a private ruin, he reads lichens like small compasses, the maps in wormwood where a few words were chiseled. The bare trees left standing, a spectacle, silvered, more awakened than anything living. 6 ...