CALL OF THE TORQUATUS
An anonyous pedestrian
Of the most tortuous of roads
The roads that are not! is our
The Pedionomus torquatus
With night calls like a snoring ghost.
Our Australian Plains-wanderer
That is a wide plains region's totem bird goads
Those who dwell there with ears for the plain
With the call of its regular haunting absence
Its vast unseenness by all of us.
* * *
BLUE CRANE BABY
Aloof it might be, but some gawking mother loves
Her blue crane baby
A gauche thing of oversized beak and giblet claw
Bare of feather, its cry behoves
A scale of ancient origins brought forward to this day
As a dwarf heir and croaking descendant of the dinosaur.
DJITGUN - (Wurrundjeri)- for the Superb Fairy Blue-Wren
- alternative (Djeetgun - (Kurnai) Gippsland; Deegd'gun - (Dja Dja Wurrung) Central Victoria )
* * *
Low flyer, scimmer
of leaves
and branches, zipper
of the outer foliage
and opener
of the inner,
he snaps
insects from their
temporary rests,
taking them eternally,
and calls
his ladies along
so the troop work
the miasma
till it's zapped
and emptied;
then fed, feathered tight
with pride
he flies up stage
to bend a tallest scrub twig
and with a blued voice
he twitters
his azure hallelujah.
