Arbaro

for Kit and Carol Dec 17, 2018

Almost forgotten, a male Regent flashing gold,
It shouldn’t be, only last week, only the second
most beautiful of bowerbirds seen in our garden.

The purpose of writing is not Linear-A or B, accounts
and trading records, taxes and listed chattels,
nor promise of an afterlife, or colloquial fictions
to cache ambitions. I know we think with language
but a Magpie is calling, right now, overhead,
the sound of an Australian morning surrounded
by lonely trees, the land cleared, grass thriving
inside my skull and down my spine.

We think syntax can join everything back again.

Stage hands are heaving or blowing cloud across
the Eastern hills, cloaking sun, eager bees invade
the waterlilies as soon as they begin to open.

The frogs have quietened down. The mise-en-scène
dilates a Greek/Woremi chorus of King Parrots,
White-throated Gerygones, Olive-backed Orioles,
Magpies, Dollar Birds, Welcome Swallows, Fairy Wrens,
the soundwaves bouncing off the enlarged example
of Brownian motion, tadpoles or beetles, the invisible
causing humming if you can get close enough.

The Wood Duck stands on the track in silence.

A Swamphen uses its rangy skinny toes to walk
Giant Paspalum stems down into the water
then picks off the seed-heads for breakfast.
Let’s remember that we too are seed eaters,
our staff of life ground down is defiling the soils.

You two are making more than a home here.

A young wallaby bounds round the dam,
taking the human way, desire lines conjoin
nature – culture on the wallaby track, seeing me
spins round in a blur and bounds off down
the gully out of sight, footfalls fading . . .