Lorikeet

Lorikeet and more lorikeets shrill sudden the air density

no pardons above garden paths in suburban settings

 

no hide, all seek you sleek swoop seconds dive peak

cheeky-coloured beak all speak no lies seven days a week

 

clambering through the eucalyptus your due

sizing seizing sipping the flowery fantastical intake.

 

Throat open, paragraphs of shower telegraph to gain

in numbers a chirrup scale pumped to maximum pitch

 

whistles warbles rants chit-chat an entire symposium

fully disposed as you are to frilled offshoots of the territory.

 

Machines produce everything humans can’t use

while you, blue bird, have everything you need.

 

Oceans offering up droplets gliding the chequered regions

and earth, miles of foliage, find a foremost feeding frenzy.

 

You are an advertisement for here now and where next,

an opportunity rocking the treetop storeys transitory. 

 

Headturn dayspring, clawgrip thinbark, fantail upswing,

shiver feathers, swallow sweetness, upwards amble.  

 

Memories of young larrikins in worn footy jumpers

weaving in side streets resemble you, yellow bird.

 

Why you hang in the sky to take a screamer, zigzag

through a pack for the cherry, scout on a wing for the crumbs.

 

Leaf light thread fleck spray spool bounce bend bite drink

pod spill swift glance gaze curve flick gloss knot tip

 

lithographs can’t do it nor installations, however real;

French composers render fiddly moderniste imitations

 

while words in such odes as exist address you, red bird,

falteringly in lines that make pretence at being faultless.

 

Touch and go is your arrival and departure mode:

waiting, your occasional swagger way out of reach.

 

Repeat and more repeats are the hard sweet shrieks

remembered as your pennants burst landwards skyward   

 

people walking around hands jokingly to their ears

what stupendous noise, then you’re gone again, green bird.