Where do woodpeckers go when they die?
How long do they lie in the gutters,
beneath green clouds of oak?
or do they even fall from the sky at all,
do they just stop flapping?
Sitting broken, watching
the crows inching closer to issue last rites.

Perhaps they just vanish,
otherwise wouldn’t there be bodies littering the streets?
their red heads masking
blood that slowly seeps out
while beetles come to mourn.

Do they have some flowered field?
do the jays act as undertaker? do the robins dig the graves?
do they fall into a stream to be rinsed off
like the name of a girl after you get laid?

Do we just not speak of it?
like stillborn children does it cause too much grief to consider
whether the corpses of woodpeckers wither in the sun
on the ground
wings splayed out, flying into earth.