Red-capped plover
At Barwon Heads
That one red-cap on the shore's silver,
its smallness set against so much vastness,
stayed focal long after its quick flight
defeated my eyes and it vanished
through a pinpoint high above the mouth,
marrying lightness with light.
Nearby, in nest-scrapes under the cliffs,
red-caps raise their young, ready to draw off
dogs or marauding birds by miming
a wounded wing. Although, in my field guide,
the map of Australia is dark with them,
in this place they're threatened. I imagine
dots of space appearing, spreading over
that blackness — here, then there, and there ...
Birds at dawn
I read through the small hours, mantled by white noise
as, beyond the town, waves peak, curl down:
we are both turning pages, the sea and I.
At first light, a stroll in billowy air
to where the deeps push up towards flight. A fulmar,
a kelp gull, scan slopes bursting with egret plumes.
Other birds manifest as collectives:
at the river, a profile of pelicans,
a sculpture park of herons; far above,
a skirl of swifts, parabolas of terns.
Dream light is tinctured primrose, dahlia-pink.
My hand lifts to block the gold colophon,
the seed-packed centre of the flower. The sea's breath,
at once exhaled, inhaled, is a mist of sound.
Late summer
Each morning a new cosmography:
between islands, silver or camel-coloured,
weed-dark straits, improvised pools and lakes.
Everywhere, prescience and farewell:
summer's light colliding with the light of autumn.
On the mud-flat, the birds forage calmly —
but for that gull worrying at a fish,
pewter and black-backed, the size of its head:
a trophy, a bugbear. It is pierced, grappled with,
thrashed again and again on sun-filmed sand:
a manic chef at work over a skillet.
Head jerking back, the drama of gulp,
regurgitation — till a challenger screams;
wings erupt; the bounty falls from the sky.
Silver gulls
The birds I can't quite like, that symbolise
cold self-intent, greed, the scalding primal
writ small: drama queens and morsel-pirates
at odds after the picnic — scraps about scraps.
So populous they seem mundane, theirs is
a median beauty. Contrasts show
in tail spots, white boiled-lolly eyes —
and leg stumps, the torn wing that heals indifference.
At their best, afloat in anodyne lulls,
neat as paper boats — or, of course, in air:
wing beats thrumming with the solemn verve
of a baton. What music do they hear?
None but their own, that of the winds
and of the switchback sea: their map of life.
White skies
Those lucent plains, stark yet uplifting,
call me back from shock, ordeal.