Woodpecker

Sometimes I hear a thump-thumping at my wall, and I wonder if it is a woodpecker. I record its riddle noises because I wonder if I might be hallucinating. The camcorder trembles as I’m moving in closer and I go slower because I think the woodpecker might hear me— and he stops. His halt makes sudden stillness and my head, it rattles with these questions of existence pouncing, buoyant, side-to-side. At times, the thump-thumping is sharper and hollow, and I wonder if my head is crack-cracking open; and other times, it sounds quite dull and full, and I wonder if the floorboards will quake up beneath me, if I’m swallowed down whole in this hole in my reasoning, if, in my perception, they do find a greater fault. Sometimes I hear a thump-thumping and nothing is there. This time, a woodpecker is there. It is a woodpecker.