Samhain Woodpecker
Silent for months, mostly
he returns, traversing
the shedding orchard, tree
to apple tree on trapeze
arcs; lands a chunk
of trunk. Skeleton cape,
red rising from breast
to pileated, flaming crest.
Asylum staccato cry wakes,
cracks, the brittle air
to the ground, rending the understory.
Hammers his flickering, torched
head, drumming, summoning
the hallowed from Hades’
bejeweled halls.
—Poem by Christopher Spatz
Featured Image: Pileated Woodpecker (c) Larry Master, masterimages.org
Christopher Spatz, inspired by Dave Foreman announcing the birth of Earth First! on the Today Show in the early ’80s, procured a copy of Eco Defense and began his peripatetic pursuits as an eco-gadfly. Yanking surveying stakes, canvassing for Greenpeace in Boston, performing for Trenton, NJ’s Klark Kent eco-street theater troupe, directing the Gunks’ Climbers Coalition, and advocating for puma recovery as the president of the Cougar Rewilding Foundation were some of his ventures. He lives and writes from the Shawangunks in southern New York State.