Tuesday Poem: "Celebration"

Kookaburras start every morning with laughter.

Magpies are innately comic,

strutting about in waistcoats

like squires inspecting the estate.

Twenty-eights are flying surprises,

exploding from the trees like abstract art.

Willy wagtails cavort to unheard rhythms.

Up on the wire, a party of galahs

mock stony-faced people in serious cars.

Butcherbirds soft-shoe shuffle

for an unappreciative audience

of trouble-tranced commuters.

Wattlebirds limber up their throats

with unholy imitations of industrial noise.

Robins interpret the sun in miniature.

As I walk down to the dam,

lemon and peppermint fragrances

carry their aspirations on the rising dew.

Herons go lazily aloft like paper kites

while frogs taunt the swamp hens

with marshland gossip.

Surrounded by this joie de vivre

I wonder why our desires are many

when our needs are few.

Have we lost our invitation

to the celebration of the world?

POET'S NOTE: I wrote this poem several years ago when I lived on the eastern outskirts of Perth in a semi-rural area. I was always fascinated by how the Western Australian birds were different and yet bore many similarities to New Zealand birds. We have nothing quite so loud as a Kookaburra, but we have its smaller cousin, the Kingfisher. We have Magpies, but no parrots like the Twenty-eight, although we have Keas and other temperate-living parrots. And Willy-Wagtails are uncannily like a black-and-white version of our Fantail.

Anyway, I offer this poem as a Springtime rebuttal to all the gloomy stuff that flies around in the worldwide media like Syria, the Global Financial Crisis and a myriad of other woes. Sometimes, we need to appreciate the intangibles, the good and glorious things this Earth offers us.