Eos ~ Sunday Morning, Feb 25

The river is stippled humid summer gold,
the sky alive with colour, the sea pushes
and pulls the rocks with hollow hiccups.

All the birds are behind my ears,
a Robin’s monotonous piping,
a Lewin’s Honeyeater’s rapid chat,
the tittering of swallows,
all things are not equal, there is hierarchy.

I turn my back once the sun comes up,
concentrate on how stone and wood
work together, the forest fabric,
beachcombing, where are the cormorants?

Swallows perched on a dead branch
in the river’s middle, I realise the tide
is peeling back, an island grows.

The magpies in possession of their favourite
dead tree perform a beautiful chorale,
the sea clear’s its throat and sunlight sweeps in
like a flood collecting all the terns and gulls
and cormorants flying in over a golden river
and there they are towards Old Man’s Hat.