Poems: Birds of a feather
This week’s Poet’s Corner features a pair of bird-inspired poems from Patrick O’Donohue.
Haiku
Birds on the roof, with
dawn cracking like a bombed egg:
the henned day cackles.
Pigeons on the wire
over a swoon of jasmine.
All that was meant Is.
Black and White Clerks
Australian magpie, Gymnorhina tibicen
Well-dressed auditors of warm worm writhing,
magpies scrutinise the inked insect script,
their wry, beaked judgments exacting a tithing
from the vast ledger of crawling things clipped.
Their songs inhabit aeons of mornings –
impervious to new noise of steel and phone.
Their carollings punctuate scorned warnings
in the cawed human crush of words and stone.
Crickets, those choired, crisp snacks, slouch in thickets,
as cats slink, wary of bold, big-beaked prey,
loath to cross the line of bad-bird pickets.
Apart from mad dogs/men, magpies hold sway.
Emergent mind of the ancient Pliocene,
magpies, of the wise book, claw their own scene.
Patrick O’Donohue was born in Brisbane and lives in Adelaide with his wife Clare. He is a member of Adelaide’s long-standing Friendly Street Poets Collective, and has been published in their Readers. Getting published is always a challenge, he thinks, “but I continue to try to make an imprint on Spacetime by growing tomatoes and writing poetry, and taking note of things in what is a difficult but infinitely interesting world”.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.