Selected poems
Plovers
They are pensioner birds of considered gait,
Who studiously avoid stepping in something unpleasant,
Whilst searching relentlessly for the bright worm.
They so carelessly dropped those years ago.
Not for them the high safety of nests and trees,
Their freckled eggs are laid at austere rest on the ground
For all the world to ogle:
The cost of their improvidence is eternal vigilance.
From beneath their pastry snoods
They squawk their manic alarms
Raising the bluff of their spiked wings — a feathered canopy
Above the reddish knobble of their tiny knees.
You might have heard them at evening as their cries
Lacerate the transit from day into night.
Grant Fraser
Black Symbols
(Calyptorhynchus funereus)
They are arriving,
kee-ow … kee-ow … kee-ow,
witch-beaked, pressing
into the sky,
black and blue visitation
by which we are blessed,
or warned.
Screaming like lovers,
en route, regal,
snapping for nuts and dominance
in the clattering trees.
Great holy creatures,
yellow cheek and tail,
they are a primeval troupe
terrifying the modest inhabitants —
blue wrens, New Hollanders and martins
adept in modest survival,
traumatised by the raucous jubilance
of sixty or more
deigning to pose
eagle-bodied, cacophonous
across our sky, screeching,
pre-human arrows of the past,
of ancientness,
blackness,
driving resurgent
into their future.
Lyn McCredden
Feathers
These are the fallen
feathers I pick up
& store in bottles
which you began
before your fall
I am filling them
a feather at a time
spine against spine
before the fluttering
as quickening
brought you
into the new world
Rory Harris
Morning Sounds in Suburbia
Down in suburbia I hark to the songs of the multitudes of birds
Currawongs, Parrots, Kookaburras, Cockatoos, Superb Fairy wrens and Koels
An operetta of caw-caws, trills, coo-coos and whistles
I extend the pleasantries by essaying their foreign tongue even though I twig they are not bilingual
They could be saying, ‘Just you wait you polluting loser. Target is in sight. Tora! Tora! Tora! Bombs away’.
‘Check out this geezer fellas! Have you ever seen someone that has such unrefined plumage. Fashion Police now,’ snickering
‘Didn’t our cousins the chicken, duck and quail have ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ affiches to be on the lookout?
It’s worthwhile familiarising yourself with the feathered watchmen
Should I be so bold to duplicate that social lubricant with a ‘Good Morning’ to my fellow homo sapiens it is usually met with facial bewilderment
I guess our ornithological friends have not devolved
Perhaps it is something in the damn water
Jamie Dawe
Rory Harris currently tutors at Playford College, a small R-9 school in Adelaide’s northern suburbs. His most recent collection, beach (2016)
Lyn McCredden is Professor of Literary Studies at Deakin University. Her research interests are in Australian poetry and fiction, with recent publications including Tim Winton: Earthed and Sacred, and a volume of poetry, Wanting Only.
Grant Fraser is a lawyer, poet and filmmaker.