Becoming a vine

Is part of its survival:

Conceals predation.

Threatened, it rears up

Fans vivid hidden color

Opens its long mouth

In the endless chain

Its slender extremity:

Prolongs swift motion

Meanwhile the forest,

Intertwined from roots to sky

Stands proud, eternal.

Piculets

Woodpecker cousins -

White-barred South America

Rufous, swathes of Asia

Tiny, brilliant

Bamboo-purposed nesters

Drill into the heart

An inch-wide entrance

To the place of eggs, of birth

Of hard-fought nurture

Of a world created by patient graft.

Marsh Treader

Walking on water

Takes some smart evolution

And clear objective

The surface tension

Of gravity and water

A world of its own

For easy sculling

On a giving trampoline

You can't beat a marsh