Small Talk

At the top of a silvered utility pole

riddled with woodpecker holes

and vertical splits is a foot long stick

bolted upright to the side and

crowned by a brown ceramic insulator.

A third of the way down the pole

two red-capped downy woodpeckers

“kerChup, kerChup, kerChup!” at each other

Are they quarreling?  Trading gossip?

Or like us are they proclaiming 

“I’m alive!  So are you!”