Galaxy Without A Hammer Poem by Cathryn Hankla

A redheaded woodpecker
works a sycamore upside down,
quinto looking for a conga,
a confutation on a wet October day.

No trail maps…only footfalls
left behind. No cigarette butts,
no windy conversation.
The grey fox went missing, tracks

dispersed. The writer who can't
tell maple from oak, knows audience
from witness. The world is no place
to be alone with a dictionary or

a writer. In the wetlands nature study
area: black cherry, poplar, black willow,
tall alder bushes, turtlehead plants
bearing white enfolded heads—

all species tolerant of walnut, which
is dye and food and as toxic
as it tastes. Cyanide
of the forest in green tough hides.

Don't populate my brownies with
bitterness. Iron nutcracker dog's
wide grin crushes fibrous almond shells
with rhythmic tail wags.

In the west, a shelter of reclaimed lumber,
slatted, without a thatch, is numbered,
hand stacked. In the east, a bay sniffs
a star-headed filly. Hoofs beat on red clay.

Shoes shush over crushed stone paths. Apple
slices crunch between horse teeth.
Airplanes crosshatching sluices of exhaust
pass over poplar leaves shuttering in a surly breeze.

A red-skinned man pipes music to his ears.
A woman's dark eye once caught, never unhooks
from his. And nowhere a straight nail.
No one cares. A flicker left early.