Abbott’s booby
December 3, 2011
Sorry if the word ‘booby’ misdirected you here.
This is another poem about Tony Abbott, leader of the Liberal Party in Australia, which is similar to the Conservative Party in England, in many ways. (Here’s the first one published on this blog, relating to climate change.) I recently had a poem about Australia’s attitude to refugees who arrive uninvited published on Eureka Street, remembering the dozens of people who died last year, smashed on the rocks of Christmas Island, an Australian island that is no longer part of Australia for immigration purposes. That poem featured the Christmas Island crab. This one draws links between another native of Christmas Island, Abbott’s booby, and the Leader of the Opposition.
Abbott’s booby
This poem regurgitated itself into my mouth —
a sardine of ill repute, silver little slug.
Abbott’s booby is a native of Christmas Island,
flying around and around.
Its cry is unmelodious,
unfit for any proper idyll.
It picks up stray ideas
and smashes them onto rocks.
(It is in league with the crabs.)
It is a member of the Gannett family.
And there, the useful metaphors run out,
like a big country’s generosity.
For this is a large, graceful bird,
once it has struggled into flight,
and it only troubles the wind.
It is unrelated to the budgie.
It is endangered.
Others, though, are entering their prime.
Oh silver, stinking poem,
shoved down a gagging throat.
P.S.Cottier
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.
PS Cottier 