NEW HOLLAND HONEYEATER

- by WDK

As if in a time of shared grief, as that much
tragedy unites, the seer-sprites remind of earlier
Australian links to the merchant seafarer Dutch,
come to the call of a New Holland Honeyeater
(Phylidonyris Novaehollandiae), that mushes
the currs off correa flowers & bottlebrushes
a mere bird in gumleaf shape, in pied camouflage,
appears but a moment before our passing cage.
'Tch Tch Tch,' it calls in alto as a sung sneeze
nothing at all like a 'Tsk Tsk' of hateful scolding,
more like affection's daily call to pets for cheese,
a thing almost grand-parental, old, enfolding;
as if a 'Tuck-in now', only pointier and sharper,
like a chook calling its chickens only higher
up the tree, the striated, beaked visitor of flowers
works honey of all the tweaked daylight hours
with sun-bright gold in quick flashes of its wing
and a 'Tchuk touche' at day’s end and beginning.