New Holland Honeyeater

NEW HOLLAND HONEYEATER

- by Wayne David Knoll

As if in a time of shared grief, as if that much
tragedy unites, these seer-sprites remind of earlier
Australian links to the merchant seafarer Dutch,
come to the call of a New Holland Honeyeater

(Phylidonyris Novaehollandiae), that mushes
the currs off correa flowers and sips bottlebrushes
a mere bird in gumleaf shape, in its pied camouflage,
appears but a moment before our passing cage.

'Tch Tch Tch,' it calls, in an alto like a sung sneeze
nothing at all like a 'Tsk Tsk' of hateful scolding;
more like affection's daily call to pets for cheese,
a thing almost grand-parental, old, enfolding;

as if a 'Tuck-in now', only pointier and sharper,
like a chook calling its chickens only higher
up the tree, the striated, beaked visitor of flowers
works honey of all the tweaked daylight hours

with sun-bright gold in quick flashes of its wing
and a 'Tchuk touche' at day’s end and beginning.

July 24, 2014