The Big Project

Two sawhorses, a yard-sale hollow core door—my backyard worktable.
On it, a pawnshop of tools: chop-saw, cat’s paw, level, cordless drill, square,
 
nail apron in whose pockets are, yes, nails, tape, carpenter’s pencil
and a peach pit. Ear protectors, eye protectors, gloves—all close at hand
 
for my big project, a dog house. I have no dog. That said, I make a racket:
hammer whacks, the urga-urga of the drill, shrieks of bloody murder from the saw.
 
In the silent spaces between board cuts, ear protectors tossed aside,
I hear a tiny tapping, rapid fire bursts from a delicate machine gun.
 
They’re barely audible. Pause. Burst of taps. Pause. Burst of taps.
From where? At which point I notice crumbs of wood float down
 
from the cherry tree. Of course. Woodpecker, this one a tiny downy,
back of the head red-patched, some thirty feet from where I stand.
 
He has chiseled in the trunk a hole no larger than a quarter—
excavating a pocket in the very heart of the tree. It so happens
 
a female downy has just hit town. She clings to the trunk
just above the nest builder. She doesn’t give him the time of day,
 
pulling disinterestedly at a bit of moss. He taps away. She dashes off
as if the prospects might be better elsewhere. He calls it a day,
 
then rockets in her direction. That’s how it is. You work at a project
with the tools at hand. You hope someone finds your creation—
 
a nest in a cherry tree, a doghouse sans dog, a 17-foot tall marble statue
of a naked man with a sling—interesting, worthwhile, a home-made gift
 
utilitarian or ephemeral, like moonlight on a frog pond. Even now,
in the silent spaces of my life, the young downy chicks having
 
long since fledged, I hear the delicate taps of a sculptor’s chisel
or a woodpecker at work. It’s creation. It’s what we creatures do.