By Means of Loudness

June 2 2019

There was the dismal spring

a woodpecker attacked the house,

his cacophonous rat-tat-tat

hammering into my sleep

day after day

in the the groggy gloom of dawn.

He would dart from a nearby tree;

his electric speed,

the fierceness

in his sharply sculpted form,

his finely coloured markings

a work of art.

I thought he must be deranged,

his delicate brain

rattling back-and-forth

in that small hard skull.

Feeling sorry for myself,

uniquely afflicted with an addled bird

drilling for grubs

in the long-dead siding of kiln-dried wood,

or boring a nest

with relentless zeal.

But then I learned

that in mating frenzy of spring

male woodpeckers display

by means of loudness,

bad-ass birds

at the pointy end of evolution,

their behaviour honed

by all the generations before them

who thrived by making noise.

Like the songbirds, trilling as they court,

squirrels' chattering

and the peeping chorus of frogs,

one more instrument

in the symphony of spring,

its discordant opus

of desire and display

and sexual war.

I, too, feel my blood rise with the season,

the imperative of nature

my animal core.

Like the young men in fast cars,

the athletes and rappers

and dancers busting moves,

we are all woodpeckers on testosterone

living short and fast

and bashing our heads against the wall

to get noticed by girls.

Who feign indifference,

clutching their friends

and giggling coyly.

At the shy and unsure

who hide their nerves with cool.

At the affected poets

the callow pretenders

the boys who would be men.

There is one theory that all the great accomplishments of men through the ages have been motivated by the need to impress women. It's all styling, preening, competitive display. So if it wasn't for sex, would we still be living in caves?!! (A rhetorical question ...but the answer, of course, is no: I'm sure we'd have done just as well (if not better) with the women in charge!)

The woodpecker story is true. And it was a bit of a consolation to learn that this is a common problem, rather than my own private hell. Which is not over-stating it: the noise really did drive me crazy.

It will disturb sensitive readers to hear how I eventually solved it, so I'll leave it at that. But since then, I am on tenterhooks every spring, nervously waiting to hear that horrible rat-tat-tat once again. So far, this cold unpleasant spring, I have been spared. I can only hope their mating dance hasn't simply been delayed by the cool weather.

(Since posting this poem, along with the illustration, I have learned that the bird was, in fact, a Yellow-Bellied sapsucker; which is a type of woodpecker distinguished by its unusual tongue. Since the Sapsuckerlooks much like the Ladderback that appears in the attached photo (which I also learned was incorrectly labelled on Google images as a Downy), I left it as is.)