BLOOD WATTLES
The rogue Australian wattle bird
isn't named for the Australian tree
of the golden plumage
but for its little earlobe-like pendant wattles
that hang like stirrup bobs
off each side as outriggers to
the quick-offense in its head.
Where I am it's a red wattle sort
that coughs and guffaws from shrubs
and street trees, and go brawling
together, smoking though the scrub;
it shakes its earless pendants as ember
as if for hot status among its kind,
blood-fighting all species, fast
winged goths of the south.
Flying yachts of the lower airs,
fighting wattlebirds have spinnakers
as tails like third wings that rudder
them all about to make them
ever shifting, ever elsewhere,
mere whirlpools of wind
where they have been...
And when they call cooee
just like other Australians,
the special air-service soldiers
of this attack force in camouflage,
they've already left pollinating
all the heady honeyed flowers
of the blood they protect.
- October 3, 2015
