Ivory-Billed Ghosts

Ivory-billed woodpeckers have learned to harvest water
as a conduit for time travel.
This is why they only appear in the rain.

When the rain falls upon their outstretched black and white wings
ivory-billed woodpeckers can glide into the light
coasting between the prismatic rainbows
shining through each and every raindrop,
disappearing in a blinding flash
and reappearing in the same storm in the same forest
but in a different time.
The woodpeckers are following the geographic memories of water
riding timelines of centuries, millennia and more,
surfing storms as they drop from the clouds,
riding the rain to appear in another when.


—Gary Every