Not for their hard lace have I tried
to write of them forever now, though
it’s reason enough, the patterns of holes
they make in our eaves, so like lace, some
people don’t repair them. My neighbor
swore the birds had deliberately carved
flowers or faces into his shutters, swore
so loud it shortened his life. But a pale man
from the college heard him, studied the holes,
& declared them proof art was genetic.
I still don’t know what to do with that,
as I say, it isn’t my reason for wanting
words. Neither is it because the flickers
do this only on the sunward sides
of houses or how they sort their acorns
into the holes as if to punctuate some
& not others. Once they’ve finished,
they go. What haunts me like creaking,
like the voice of wood, is what happens
when they come back after the acorns
have cooked for a few days. They listen,
they listen to the acorns, they cock
their heads like old men on porches
& listen for the hot playing of a worm.
If they hear nothing, they knock. Tell me
it’s enough to say this. Whoever you are
out there, tell me I don’t need to go on
about the trail of holes I’ve left, the buried
books & boxes, the hands of lovers held
to my ears that I might catch a whisper
of something like Come in.

© Brendan Constantine, all rights reserved. This poem originally appeared in the Los Angeles Review. It is featured in Letters To Guns.

Brendan Constantine is a Southern California poet and champion for the literary arts. He teaches at the Winward School and is well known for his workshops at Venice's Beyond Baroque. He performs his work across the United States.(more)