Budgies and shortlisting
October 1, 2024
Budgerigar
Ten million green commas punctuate blue sky,
quick breaths of swooping wonder, multiplied.
Water-hole is your target; liquid rope pulls you down
and the whole emerald sky is falling, diving,
as miniature bodies scoop into pool.
Your individual markings have taken you
further than native flight; outside the Louvre
I saw you, cold, trying to break in, as pointillist
as Pissarro but acrylic in your finish.
A proud but damp escapee from French balcony,
regretting the lost seed and the found liberty.
So plump and fresh, I have heard you were good eating,
a winging fast food charred to a turn;
as far from stringy battery chook as fingers in the fire.
Most know you singly; whistling in cages,
bowing and bobbing, rattling plastic mirrors.
Driven mad you ring and ring chink-chinky bells
or make love to that hard, hard-to-get reflection.
What joy to see you
just once, as you swoop,
one stitch amongst the tapestry,
a blade of grass in feathered turf carpet, magically landing,
transforming dreary waterside with that fallen sward of Eire.
Swift dragon of twenty million wings,
fluorescing with your simple, beak-filled joys.
PS Cottier
I have just returned from Boulia, in Queensland, about 300 km from Mount Isa, where I finally saw budgies in the wild. These have been my main target bird for ages, but they’ve always avoided me. We also saw wild cockatiels, which was wonderful.
***
In less ornithological news, I have two works shortlisted in separate national competitions. Firstly, my book Tuesday’s Child is Full (In Case of Emergency Press) is shortlisted for the Society of Women Writers (NSW) Book Awards for Poetry. This one is announced at a ceremony Sydney in late November.
Secondly, The Thirty-One Legs of Vladimir Putin, a novella manuscript co-written with NG Hartland, has been shortlisted for the 20/40 prize, run by publishers Finlay Lloyd. The main prize for this one is publication, so it will be a very exciting announcement later this month.
Tuesday poem: Orange-bellied parrots 2123
November 28, 2023
Orange-bellied parrots, 2123 Neophema chrysogaster They are bigger than budgerigars, but have never been as numerous. A scant handful survived in 2023, and smart orange bellies seemed to be flashing a caution, a more-than-amber pause, about to fall into a red stop, forever. How many birds must there be for an official murmuration? We don’t know, but just yesterday, we counted one hundred or more, here, at Warn Marin/Western Port. The shrubs whistled as if brave cicadas, had flown over Bass Strait, not these brilliant, blue-browed, blue-winged birds. Their song was almost lost to the air’s ear. Now we can vouch for its weirdness. The heath has not felt beaks tearing off so much fruit for years. Tree hollows must be back way down South, (or a thousand hand-crafted boxes) just enough for breeding, enough for a murmur, if not a murmuration. They don’t move en masse, though, it must be noted, but improvise, jazzy, in ones and threes. They light up the bushes like Christmas lights, the bellies seen, then hidden in green-grey leaves, switched on and off by foraging. We hear that some have been seen as far North as Sydney. That may be a rumour, a hopeful mistake, and yet, we saw one hundred. How many make a murmuration? PS Cottier
Parrots don’t form murmurations, like starlings, for example. (Perhaps budgies do? I have never seen them in the wild.) I was lucky enough to see a murmuration of native metallic starlings in Far North Queensland recently. But I like the idea of seeing enough of such a rare bird as the Orange-bellied parrot to even think of the word ‘murmuration’ in regard to them. Will they still be around in 100 years? I hope so, and that is what this unusually optimistic poem (for me) envisages.
And as we move towards Christmas, there’s a passing reference to that season here.
Tuesday poem: Four inch spiky heels
November 7, 2023
Sinking into grass
four inch spiky heels
she’s two bottles down;
her fascinator breaking
snaps like horses’ legs
PS Cottier
Tanka ‘Four-inch spiky heels’ first published in Poems to Wear: From Japan and Australia, ed. Amelia Fielden, Ginninderra Press, 2016
An apt poem for Melbourne Cup day.
Tuesday poem: Palm cockatoo
October 9, 2023
Palm cockatoo Heads like a child's drawing of bird heads, huge beak and feather mane, flopping, last extant beat-poet, croaking of things hep and cool. Man, you hit bedrock on that arching drum, selecting the sticks that give the deepest echo, sound playing through that tall wooden amplifier, from dark roots to hazy blowing sky. You contemplate the waving tops of tropical trees, plumed angel-head, stylish in your deep black daytime rhythm. Inimitable pulsing punctuation, beaky accent perched above the forest's bright green flow.
PS Cottier
(Image copyright Birdwatching Tropical Australia)
I have posted this poem before, many years ago, however I just saw Palm Cockatoos in the flesh (or feather) for the first time up in Cape York. The male uses sticks to drum on hollow trees, something possibly unique among non-human creatures. (Although we do tend not to see, or hear, things that other species do.) My left shoulder boasts a tattoo of a Palm cockatoo; over ten years since that was inked I saw one.
The photo is of the one we got a good look at; I also saw a couple in flight. We saw Golden-shouldered parrots on the way up, an equally special bird that nests in termite mounds. It is unfortunately one of Australia’s most endangered birds.
The next bird I really want to see is more common. The budgie (the wild one) has always evaded me. I’d love to see a large flock of them in the wild. Occasionally one is seen in Canberra, but they are escapees from aviaries, given away by size and colour, probably wondering where all the seed went.
Tuesday poem: [haiku]
August 23, 2023
deep Dickensian dark angler fish holds a lamp — Please Sir, I want more light PS Cottier
That’s not really an angler fish, but it’s such a great illustration by J-J Grandville that I had to use it.
