Wide lemon eyes, gnarled feet on the fluted spire –
This girl bows on the Chemistry Building.
Their black tail perks up and she leaps out
pied currawong to lick the air with the smatterings of their white wingtips.
Her cannon of a beak lets fly “oowip-qua!”
while she looks for a nesting place in the curves
of sandstone reliefs.
She dances in aerial silk at dogfight speed,
whistling and whirring with every wing-beat
as if scrubbing the air to a fine polish.
eastern rosella Each tumble and flick flashes a new angle
of rainbow accent on her fighter-jet dress.
This is a performance for herself
and I have intruded by wording its majesty.
Boygirls tend to sing when the wind picks up,
or in rain – it’s called a subsong,
a secret conversation with groaning storm clouds
pied butcherbird warbled at the tops of gum trees.
This beautiful boy, she sings in showers
and gets to pick who listens.
She braids his melodies with generations of virtuosity.
It is better to say
“I want to be a bird”.
It is so much easier
to say “I want to be a bird”
because when a girl dries her wings
by daring the sun to magnify her brilliance,
pied cormorant the screaming halo that bursts between her feathers
is no bigger than her size.
Her belly stays full of warm light
when she dives like a dart
from her rock to her pond,
and I stay full
of my self.
People are unstoppably beautiful in flight.
Precise bodies, bones filled with wind,
sculpted with their own soft hands
cattle egret into obsessive symbology.
When the November sun bursts down,
girls dye their crests turmeric
and perch on the gentle backs of cows.
I am grounded.
This dirt digs into my feet
and this analogy digs into my brain
eclectus parrot like talons (of course, like talons)
but I am grounded. I am steadied.
I will keep my gaze level, lest I look for birds
and find my body on the lips of the blinding sun.
