Crested Terns
The horizon is frayed by a grey curtain, birds wheel
over the river running slick and shiny as if in a movie.
Terns hang then dive into the ripped central channel,
usually pulling out before stabbing the wet mass.
All three of them fail, one squawks a guttural curse,
they float down in hesitant light to others at rest on the spit.
I fail to shoot the impact, but catch one later as the sky
turns blue as we are leaving and as they turn snow-white.
Bar-shouldered Dove
A dove sits on the nest, the patience of instinct is silence.
We never saw the to and fro of nest building, or the two chicks
first squeezing from underneath her. She just appeared, sees me.
I take a photograph, make it quick. Grey-scale scalloped modesty
wears Klimt epaulettes, fit for purpose, absolutely motionless
until the sun locates her then her bill opens and the throat vibrates,
cooling her down. We worry, young Kookas practise sore-throat
gargling nearby, a Square-tailed Kite cruises over.
Our vantage is a window, less disturbance, have to lean over
the CD player, pile of music and ornaments. I look round the room
cluttered with 360-degree views. Art books lying flat on their backs
climb past the bottom of the picture windows. Earlier, I was looking
for Hugo Van der Goes, can only find Van der Weyden and Memling.
Memory comes without a receipt. I would like to see the Portinari
altarpiece hanging in the Uffizi one last time, an impact painting.
She left the nest for half an hour without even a goodbye.
Needle-tailed Swifts
The air is spinning overhead, wings criss-cross, skiing
the air currents. The Swifts up to 80 metres high stick
to last of the radiance. Wings swept back, they slide around
streaming stirring cloud, pieces of blue sky emerge close
to home. The sky is still breathing, the birds show no sign
of slowing. At school there was a craze for attempting to devise
a perpetual motion machine. I’d forgotten until this moment:
mechanical, electrical, chemical? I forget so much.
The stars spin too, but to a different time signature.
I try counting for my report – 80, 90, best guess
120. 7.20-7.45 pm.
Their narratives are fugitive but they endure.
The roads and paddocks, buildings, forests and rivers below
are more important than they realise. I am grounded.
My ground is not theirs. They have no ground.
They sheer so close they might have magnets to repel.
A few birds come close. I can’t move just revolve, winding
their movements pulsing inside me. They seem to be spinning
south then coalesce again circle and casually turn back north
over the forest of Jagun from where they came.
They cross nation states in a leisurely rush to breed in Siberia,
Mongolia, Korea, Japan. They loop a figure eight from habit,
extending their journey to 40,000 ks a porous perimeter,
how safe they look as I shoot. Something holy about attention
Movement echoes multiplying a beautiful abundance, impoverished
compared to the dark skies as Passenger Pigeons migrated for days
from Texas to the Great Lakes. What riches we have razed?
What mysteries are left? My dizzy delirium is not theirs,
my stiff neck is not theirs, my heavy legs, not theirs,
Do they miss the work of climbing mountains, or swimming
against the tide? Making an effort can make it worthwhile.
Imagine a day without birds, their songs, beauty, behaviour.
The day erodes, light slung low thickens, but not up there.
There is more sky above our garden than in any painting.
Swifts are successful experiments skating on thin air
in Giotto’s blues and greys, no matter how much cloud
they will not rest on pillows. I thought they never sat down
but read that they have been found hiding in the tops
of tall trees at midnight. Not that they are frightened,
they are called ‘storm birds’, but they have no voice.
It must be nice to touch the sky, they reach two kilometres
becoming invisible. This spiralling vision is hurting my neck.
I would not call this a religious experience, but why not?
It’s not like looking both ways to cross the street, or
scrolling though a news feed, or being snared by a red
sales tag – this is radically different – like watching a ballet
while thinking of their lives, simultaneously alive and fertile,
and taking this opportunity to pay for my sins.
‘A man may walk abroad and no more see the sky than if he walked under a shed.’ Thoreau
(Journal, 21 August, 1851). Another item to add to the inventory.
