Friday 9 December 2011

Strange Birds

in Darwin they call it the build-up; sleeping in the donga,
alone, except for the cottony gecko scat
scattered through my sheets
flutes of hollowed bamboo
breath a peculiar music,
and confusions of trills in the wet dark are droplets,
brackish or fresh;
the weird birds unknowable, unimaginable;
they sound like mad ventriloquists
throwing the voices of fake felt macaws
into the steamy corners of the night
the dark leans against the mosquito wire walls
and I know straightaway
I was born to scuff this stone underfoot;
the night air moving over me my bare arms
above the sheets
or lying on my stomach my hands cradling the pillow
the sounds of the night birds oh!
a wild baby pig grunting pacing the dirt with its tiny hooves
outside the door in the early hours
I let the night in between my legs
I let the night let the night
and arch at the wild unseen
moving moving my throat
arrested
I cry out
like one of those strange unnameable
birds
back in Hobart
three degrees
and winding over the saddle through the snow
listening to a didgeridoo, displaced;
and I tell him, It was thirty-three when I left.
Home, and a boobook owl
pops the night with its questions:
pop silence
             pop silence
                                 pop

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