TUESDAY POEM - Celebration by Andrew Bell

                            CELEBRATION 

                                    Kookaburras start every morning with laughter.

                                    Magpies are innately comic,

                                    strutting about in waistcoats

                                    like squires inspecting the estate.

                                    Twenty-eights are flying surprises,

                                    exploding from the trees like abstract art.

                                    Willy wagtails cavort to unheard rhythms.

                                    Up on the wire, a party of galahs

                                    mock stony-faced people in serious cars.

                                    Butcherbirds soft-shoe shuffle

                                    for an unappreciative audience

                                    of trouble-tranced commuters.

                                    Wattlebirds limber up their throats

                                    with unholy imitations of industrial noise.
                                    Robins interpret the sun in miniature.

  

                                    As I walk down to the dam,
                                    lemon and peppermint fragrances
                                    carry their aspirations on the rising dew.

                                    Herons go lazily aloft like paper kites

                                    while frogs taunt the swamp hens
                                    with marshland gossip.

                                    Surrounded by this joie de vivre

                                    I wonder why our desires are many

                                    when our needs are few.

                                    Have we lost our invitation

                                    to the celebration of the world?

                                    Andrew Bell

POET'S NOTE: "I wrote this poem several years ago when I lived on the eastern outskirts of Perth in a semi-rural area. I was always fascinated by how the Western Australian birds were different and yet bore many similarities to New Zealand birds. We have nothing quite so loud as a Kookaburra, but we have its smaller cousin, the Kingfisher. We have Magpies, but no parrots like the Twenty-eight, although we have Keas and other temperate-living parrots. And Willy-Wagtails are uncannily like a black-and-white version of our Fantail.

Anyway, I offer this poem as a Springtime rebuttal to all the gloomy stuff that flies around in the worldwide media like Syria, the Global Financial Crisis and a myriad other woes. Sometimes, we need to appreciate the intangible, the good and glorious things this Earth offers us." 

*

     Thank you, Andrew -

Flying Between Gloom & Glory - CB

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill.

This week's editor on the TP hub is Wellington writer, Saradha Koirala

with just a point man in the ocean 

by Vaughan Gunson

Peninsula (c)hills; birds watching

Temporarily disheveled

My feathers have been in disarray these past few weeks. (Actually, the ones I'm showing here belonged to Murray, plucky bird that he was; no doubt, still a zealous preener.) 

In time, I might find language to write about aspects of my recent 'in-house' process, but for now, suffice to say most of the changes taking place involve 're-' words... recognizing, reconfiguring, recycling, re-booting, remembering, redistributing, recharging, releasing - and ultimately, the realization that I feel a sense of gratitude and relief at finally reaching a place of relative respite and reasonable resolution.  

There's a way to go yet (isn't there always?) but let me risk saying this; while so much depends on the angle and way we look at things, the straggly bits really do have a habit of finding their place. Which is pretty remarkable, don't you reckon? 

There are times when - no matter how squiff & skew we let our tail feathers get - grace abounds. 

   

     

>< 

Miriam Levine's poetry collection The Dark Opens has kept me company during these 'off the wire' days. 

Thank you, Mim. Your writing is tough and delicate; striking and wise. The dark does indeed open and when it does, light is already there, eager to come skipping on in...