*

A kind word in passing to the tawny frogmouth
who has chosen a detail
of a lofty branch in a tree
that’s been earmarked for old growth logging,
where it copies itself
into a methylated stencil of a bird
attempting to repeat itself
on a length of doomed wood.
The night is alive with its denials
of the language of comfort, the chain-driven language
of human interruption.

*

Sincere thanks to the sentries
at the north-facing gate
of the Jack Jumping stronghold
my insect-loving son has excavated
with stick and shoe, going down
into a cross-section of tunnels, turning points,
egg-concealments and Queen-protecting
false walls and trails,
even when he reached in
past the highly strung, orange-feelered guards,
they let him pass, their daggers sheathed,
their communication systems down, their capability
for inducing anaphylactic shock
downsized to a tense demonstration
of how to exercise restraint
as the dead and wounded were hauled away
over shoeprints and handprints and leaves.

*

An unfiltered, unrestrained buon viaggio
to the five-metre white pointer
that made a pass at me while diving
ten miles from the Tolkeinesque pinnacles and crags
of the Tasman Peninsula,
and quite likely the same distance
from the end of my life,
surrounded by dolphins
who scattered like torn muscle, leaving me
in over a thousand, sun-shafted feet
of Great Southern ocean,
where no shadow can find purchase on the Shelf, yes,
I shout farewell
to the creature who came so close
I could count the rods and cones in its eyes,
its teeth like stone arrowheads found on a dig,
the predator who lowered
the torn ensign of its dorsal fin
and turned into a column of green water
with, not a flourish exactly, not the signature departure
of a curiosity satisfied,
more the nonchalant glide and disappearance
of a much maligned and misunderstood biter,
who’d already had its fill
of the whelping blood of seal,
the cloud-making blood of the calf of whale. 

*

A prayer for the galah Auden
or, as my son insisted, each time I called the bird’s name      – the galah Gordon – 
who suffered a cerebral haemorrhage
after falling from the crest of his cage
and who, after burial,
after having the misery put out from his eyes,
called one last time
through stepped-on soil and stones,
a call that came from below
where his head had been, a call
not plaintive, compliant or wild, simply one that was
unrecognisable
from the list of words and music
he had just begun to learn.