Banging My Head Against a Tree
By Rory C. Keel
“What a dumb animal!” I said. And I said it loud enough for the bird to hear it. There I stood, on the side of the road with my head turned up into the sky, watching a woodpecker banging his beaked face against a branch of an old dead tree.
Focus
When I spoke he briefly paused, turned his head sideways and gazed down to see where the insult came from. He ignored me and continued his noisy rapping.
Persistent
The bird was unrelenting in his pounding, sounding like a machine gun in a war zone. I wondered if the woodpecker ever got a headache. Questions like, “Does he ever hit a tree so hard his beak shatters? Does he get frustrated after chipping a hole in the tree, only to find nothing? Why can’t the woodpecker be like all the other birds and just eat a bug crawling around in the open?”
I looked to find other feathered feasters and noticed there were none. He was the only bird within view of this barren tree.
The big worms
As he hopped from branch to branch, I watched the red tuft of feathers atop his head bob like a sewing machine needle. Suddenly silence filled the air. One of the biggest grubs I had ever seen wiggled in the very beak that had pounded the dead tree.
Success
There are times in my writing when I feel like I’m banging my head against a tree and it hurts. Sometimes I pound on the computer keyboard until I think it will break only to be disappointed in the results. Occasionally I feel all alone, ready to give up and be like everyone else. When this happens I think about that woodpecker, and how his focus and persistent work helped him get beneath the surface where the big grubs are.
Wordsmith Six 