*

Gone From Me

Yesterday,

in dreaming,

the Ivory-billed woodpecker

came back

again.

He was

simply there 

stationed in the

bottom-lands

visible from my

cabin window

 rap-rap,

rap-rap,

rap-rapping

into loblolly,

 sweet gum, and laurel oak, 

beckoning the Savannah River,

the Okefenokee,

the Isle of Caroline. 

Beckoning me.

My elusive bird.

out from the Bayou Sara,

we were lone

as one

sending to

and fro 

some conjoining 

code of heart

asway 

in the swampy hammock,

timing to hear

a  toilless double knock

covering the soil-less

water soaked 

terrain of the 

tupelo,

the cypress,

the cottonwood 

nestling, toggling long

their courses, settling 

gaps and notes between. 

 © Teresa A. Price

*Ivory-billed Woodpecker by Theodore Jasper, from Studer's Popular Ornithology