Friday evening’s International Women’s Day event at the UUChurch was beyond fantastic – Cape Ann women authors reading Cape Ann women authors. I kept the program with the list of authors and can’t wait to dive in to the books shared by the authors.  JoeAnn Hart did a simply stellar job organizing the event, held in conjunction with the Gloucester Writers Center.

I was so inspired after being with these wonderfully gifted women and listening to the poignant words of so many inspiring Cape Ann authors, I wrote a poem that night about the weary female Yellow-bellied Sapsucker that has suddenly appeared in our garden. I’ll keep working on it but here is the beginnings –

Sap-licker

Startled songbird silently flings
from approaching steps.

Behavior not usually seen by the insouciant
feathered friends that call our garden home.

Why so timorous?

Neatly arranged squares and holes
riddle the bark of the Dragon Lady holly.

The masterfully drilled, cambium pierced checkered grid is glistening
in the sun – with deep wells and narrow streamlets of sweetness.

A sap-lick!

I wait to see her, half hidden and as
quiet as the owl after a long night

Weary and bedraggled, the Sapsucker returns
An arduous migration, no doubt.

She pauses guardedly
No one must know of her creation
with its treasured life fluid seeping down branches.

Her soft yellow belly and stippled feather patterning
Mirrors the spotty bark.

Her camouflage is not blown. She dives in with tender gusto
Delicately excavating the holes with brush tongue.

Wind rustles through leaves and she flings off
Only to return again and again and again
To her life-giving channels of gold flowing through tree veins.