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: Palm cockatoos
July 16, 2012
Palm cockatoos
Heads like a child’s drawing of bird heads,
huge beaks and feather manes, flopping,
last extant beat-poets, 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 tall wooden amplifier,
from dark roots to hazy blow of sky.
You contemplate the waving tops
of tropical trees, plumed angel-head,
stylish in your black daytime rhythm.
Inimitable pulsing punctuation,
beaky accent perched above
the forest’s bright green flow.
(The palm cockatoo is the only wild animal known to select, and possibly to store, sticks for use as musical instruments.)
P.S. Cottier
I am fascinated by palm cockatoos, although I have never even seen one. They live in the far tropical north of Queensland. The tattoo comes from much closer Queanbeyan, just over the border in New South Wales.
So why would you get a tattoo of a bird you have never seen? A little reminder that there are more things in heaven and earth…an encouragement to discover new worlds and boldly go…a cheap and less seedy way of being a pirate?
I don’t know, but I think the tattoo artist did a good job. (Thank you Carbine.) I have posted a black and white photo as the colour one I have makes my skin look a rather alarming yellow: just below nuclear buttercup. I will try and obtain a better photo, as the detail is blurred in this one. But this is my cockatattoo forever looking for sticks. My skin is the drum. Watch your finger!
For poetry, much of which is written in a country where tattoos are not unknown, please press this feather:
PS Cottier 