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

Meeting Global Aliens in Australia Felix

MEETING THE GLOBAL ALIENS OUT IN THE CORANGAMITE


In this southern global
summer of morning on the Western Plains
named by the surveyor
explorer Major Thomas Livingstone Mitchell
as Australia Felix, himself
named for the African explorer David Livingstone,
one long and slim bird
with the flash of candled world sunlight on its wing,

a New Holland Honeyeater,
that is, Phylidonyris novaehollandiae,
named by the British
ornithologist John Latham in 1781, who took post
of taxidermised specimens
sent him by Sir Joseph Banks, hangs like
a suckling at the breast
from a garden where the old fashioned Fuschias,

and this is the pink-red
Fuchsia Magellanica flower in the long-trousers of
its bells in a Genus
which French Minim monk and botanist, Charles Plumier,
called after his foxy
friend & colleague, German botanist Leonhart Fuchs,
and that originate
from Chile and Argentina, of old Gondwanaland,

but in the Cono Sur zone
of Andean and temperate South America
in a Species named
for the Straits of Magellan, which, in turn of course
were named for Ferdinand
Magellan, the well-known intrepid Portuguese
explorer and navigator,
and also known as the hummingbird fuchsia,

are confluent here,
translated here,
here meet: as is meet and good;
as if all the languages
and botanists and avian science and the explorers
of far flung places and lands
were met with here in this, as Banks and Fuchs
meet Latham and Plumier
and Magellan and Livingstone meet Mitchell;

all well met in the nectar
that the host of Magellanica fuschia weeps
and which an early-bird
novaehollandiae honeyeater intrepidly imbibes;
a simple bird drinking
from a simple garden flower in a simple - like it
was a call to go, to name,
a peeling carillion of red-clad global bells.

Gorook Song - (Australian Magpie Song)

GOROOK SONG (AUSTRALIAN MAGPIE SONG)

- by Wayne David Knoll

Light washes dark sky with its call out
For a first word as the song of the birds.

Hey hey sunshine that comes after rain
Hey heaven come after traverses thru’ hell
Pheyew, rip rip up the fabric, here we are
By hell, zip zip down the world we’ll go.

The tree necks a break for the hard weather
It’s branch offers a table to cling out a wait.

Hey hey sunshine that comes after rain
Here’s heaven come after traversing hell
Phew, rip rip up the fabric, here we are
By hell, zip zip down the sky we’ll go.

A ladder-climb up the sky beats an air drum
To mount joust and not lose to proud eagles

Hey hey sunshine that comes after rain
Hey heaven come after traverses thru’ hell
Pheyew, rip rip up the fabric, here we are
By hell, zip zip down the world we’ll go.

For pied-birds rent the air owed the gum-trees
We pay a life-lease in a death-pledge of song.

Hey hey sunshine that comes after rain
Hey heaven come after traverses thru’ hell
Pheyew, rip rip up the fabric, here we are
By hell, zip zip down the world we’ll go.

A dive writes on broad-black with a chalk-edge,
In winged claw at knife-point as swoop bloods.

Hey hey sunshine that comes after rain
Here’s heaven come after traversing hell
Phew, rip rip up the fabric, here we are
By hell, zip zip down the sky we’ll go.

The wires of human-kind are bow strung
To be tuned by us pied birds of great airs.

Hey hey sunshine that comes after rain
Hey heaven come after traverses thru’ hell
Pheyew, rip rip up the fabric, here we are
By hell, zip zip down the world we’ll go.


July 2014

Gatherer of Thistledown

GATHERER OF THISTLEDOWN


Goldfinch: quick as silver
on its mantle, on its collar;
fast wedgebill, seedeater,
gatherer of thistledown, it

flies up in a quick jerk
to wind-leap the air hurdles
and down to the outer twig
that flickers, hardly bends.

Goldfinches Twitter

GOLDFINCHES TWITTER

Goldfinches twitter, their
calls fill the Spring, short
messages as if bi-locating

each to each; calls twang
like wires plucked by angels
mantled in robes of yellow

as if aware of the mirror-selves
of their transfixing beauty,
they must twitter and twitter

to keep their kind birdbrained,
to know that they're not alone
to stay waked from reflection.

Anonymous, Until Its Voice

ANONYMOUS, UNTIL ITS VOICE


It is a plain Australian grey thrush,
more exactly titled a Strike-Thrush
commonly the harmonious thrush.


It's not usually noticed until it calls;
as if 'Colluricincla harmonica' is the
voice Anonymous takes as a bird.


Like sweet water between stones he's
our liquid songster on watch of terra australia
striking pleasing, glorious, melodious notes.


I once heard one way remote, way east of Alice
Springs, like cool water inside dry canyons walls;
and I heard one yesterday in my own backyard


and still am left in song echoes, feeling visited.

Rosella Calls

ROSELLA CALLS

Eastern Rosella's cry their ode
In flight out of my garden plot
As if signaling in raw Morse Code:
Dot-dot. Pause. Dot-dot.

Like a poem by Les Murray
About a way these parrots fly;
Wings open; wings shut, then open
Dot-dot. Pause. Morse Code for I.