Canto of All Birds Celestial

All birds celestial, moving through purgatorial

vapours, ascending from trees glowing gold,

bands of colour in their wings, arising from earth

itself, interlopers calling the surveyed area

of flyover ‘our property’—cutting across cornices,

levels, layers, circles, rings—the list is held

by a magnet to the fridge, ‘birds seen on our…’:

black-faced cuckoo-shrike, pink and grey galah,

ring-necked parrot, kookaburra, azure kingfisher,

sacred kingfisher, rainbow honeyeater, crow,

Willie Wagtail, black-shouldered kite, Nankeen

Kestrel, wedge-tailed eagle, peregrine falcon

(telegraph lines on front road), mountain duck,

white-faced heron, black cockatoo, little corella,

senegal dove, silver eye, rufous song lark,

Jackie Winter, pardalote, goshawk, swift,

golden whistler, pallid cuckoo, magpie lark,

red wattle bird, New Holland honeyeater,

crested tit shrike, white-breasted robin, grey

fantail, weebill, yellow-rumped thornbill, painted

quail, red-capped robin, magpie, zebra finch,

Western Spinebill, egret, butcher bird…f lying

from seven trees of gold on the crest, shedding

seven bands of colour, perched on star pickets,

twists of barbed wire, alighting wild oats,

severing fruit, scratching gravel, shaking down

jam trees, earthing the aerial, infusing undergrowth.