Haven’t seen eagles around here for months.
Distressing. The pink and grey galahs circulate
and I imagine the pink and grey
from the Pinnacles has followed us here.
It is many birds in one. It speaks outside
my window, its scrawls waking us at the crack
of dawn. Wasps are hunting spiders
in the late spring sunlight. It is pleasant outdoors,
though the UV factor is high and you’ll burn fast.
Walking North Road three elegant parrots
flew out of the galah’s mouth and shone. A robin
redbreast, a piece of heart-bypass.
I ask the galah why its grace doesn’t shine
down between skyscrapers, in houses of government,
inside the heads of the military. I am we,
it replies cryptically, as if quarrelling
with itself. I don’t hear clearly, distracted
by the rarity of the elegant parrots.
But that was in the past. I didn’t hear clearly.
I asked. It replied. I reconstruct a renaissance
where there are no ancient universities.
My father would say: Stop being a galah.
A boss on the wheatbins: You’re a bit of a galah.
A farmer in the Mingenew pub: You lot
are carryin’ on like a flock of galahs.
The Macquarie Dictionary says, colloquially,
galah means ‘a fool’. I discern its beauty.
Intelligence. Social lucidity. Irony.
The galah says: you are galahomorphic…
my pink is an amalgam of simmer…
up the driveway there is less wattle
to perch on—pruned…virtuous pagans
adrift we can’t get them out of your head.
There’ll you hear the voice of a megapreacher
preaching out of his mega-church, luscious
as methamphetamine and a good massage.
There’ll you see a prime minister—no relation—
celebrate a death sentence when death sentences
are against the law in his country. Death’s
global economy. And China’s new ‘grey area’ billionaires
making the Forbes wealth list, big punters in Vegas
with party ties as lavish as high rise in Shanghai.
There’ll you see mum and dad investors
with their blue chip portfolios, superannuation
funds leveraging old age like organ donors.
There’ll you see the ‘apathetic’ who prayed
adequately to keep the CDs turning and televisions
plugged in, extracted enough to make life profitable.
There’ll you see the impoverished wanting their share
of the rising seas, their share of prayer—hot stock-market tips,
penis enlargement, political incorrectness.
Or you’ll see a bone-dry creek bed
run red, death squads like butcher birds
rushing in to kill before flight.