Poem: Butcherbird in the Tuart Gums (from Miniscule ©)

Butcherbird in the Tuart Gums

Some days I carry a heavy weight in a hessian bag

that it's hard to get through the trees.

Other days I'm careful not to crush leaf litter

with my feet where an anchored world lives.

The butcherbird carries the self, much lighter than a hessian bag

full of stones and can be heard singing in the Tuart gums.

It seems this songbird is not weighed down with heavy thoughts,

but rises each morning, remembering the notes of a Bellini opera.

At dawn she practises her repertoire similar to Maria Callas,

a bel canto, the dramatic, wide-ranging rise and fall

of her throat, the beautiful trilling of her voice

as a Violetta in La Traviata.

Yesterday in the Tuart gums, I caught sight of the bird again,

a moth in her beak, amid the heavy stones, tail waggling.

Pictures of Butcherbirds by courtesy of Creative Commons