More poetic ornithology
November 23, 2010
The poem ‘Currawongs’ below was recently highly commended in the Ipswich Poetry Feast. Incidentally, I just judged the adult sections at the unrelated Cooma Feast of Poetry. Some wonderful poems were entered, making my first foray into judging rewarding but difficult. It’s much easier to write ‘the stuff’ than to judge other people’s.
Seems there’s a lot of word-feasting going on.
Currawongs
Weaving nets of strong noise in the air,
the electric weft and warp alarming,
they swoop down, direct as any stare.
They are nobody’s favourite bird,
brunching on bright blue wrens
or snacking on smorgasbords
of tenderised olive silvereyes.
They watch us watching them,
estimate our worth, and dismiss us
from their mental menu: Too big,
head too tough to spear with beak.
This is why we dislike these
sharp-gazed moving funerals.
They don’t sing for us, or plume for us,
and reduce us to something at the edge.
Currawongs’ natures know no flattery,
offer nothing to our mountainous vanity.
Beyond cute, below eagle’s sky-high beauty,
they care only for their meat, song and nest.
They tell us that we are not the centre,
the be-all, the crux; the inarguable best.
Flying dogs
July 21, 2010
Do dogs dream of flying?
The paws scrabbling during dreams,
the muffled barks, wrapped in cloud;
could it be they chase sparrows
up beyond tight leash of earth?
How far do their brains stretch,
those companions of smooth aliens,
those interpreters of foreign voice?
They know to find meaty meaning
in nonsensical noise we make,
the complicated sound droppings
we float into blank noseless air.
Why then could dog not look beyond
and dream of wings, of slipped collar
soaring? Little Pegasus of wag,
small brown scented eagle;
scratching blue in basket bliss.
Rainbow of smells is beckoning.
P.S. Cottier
Loss of a pet
June 29, 2009
No obituary
Presented to us in a terrier’s mouth,
he squirmed his way back into being
through a tight vice of punctures.
Dinny (the dog’s near dinner).
An experimental dish who charmed
with his monomania for grass.
Grass in and grass out,
pelleted, my weed and feed,
my murmuring mower of lawn.
Tonight we return him to grass
and precious green will sprout
from pink, once eager mouth.
No obituary for a guinea pig
that simple vegetarian of soul.
None, that it, save this.
PS Cottier 