Summer breaks, it goes to bed,
The sunburnt country is no longer red.
Autumn’s breath begins to creep
Across the plains and gullies deep.
It plays an eerie, thoughtful tune,
Beneath a warm and amber moon,
Whispering amongst the majestic gums
To warn the scrub the season comes.
While the changing leaves don't hit the eye:
Bursting gold appears beneath the southern sky,
Bright wattles along the dirt track
To push the longer shadows back.
A flock of cockatoos takes flight,
Screaming at the angled light.
For me, this wind is pure relief...
I find no need for any grief.
Each and every day it's such a thrill to include
all the home grown organic produce, such a large percentage of our daily intake of food
Fruit that that does not fit with ease within a rhyming verse
no matter, it's the delicacy of the flavour on the taste buds as they burst
Some of these fruits include, black, yellow and green sapote
gotta eat them on their own, not in a fruit compote
Some fruits are flowering now, in the future we shall yield
native atherton raspberry, papaya and soursop
The aroma of their blossom spreading through the field
There's mangoes, bananas and dragon fruit, all part of the enterprise
but there's predators like fruit bats and noisy cockatoos, who like the fruit as much as us
From those attracted to the fruit, we must find some form of disguise
Other varieties in the orchard, rollinias, bullocks heart and peanut butter fruit
One day they will provide some tucker, part of the culinary pursuit
beanie babies appeared in 1994
a tiny stuffed dog, bear, pig, but not one more
they featured a heart tag, birthday and poem
millions have now found a forever new home
thirty-one-years later they are still selling well
cockatoos, crabs, hedgehogs, beanie babies do sell
foxes, sloths, lobsters, a dog who is blue
and they remain reasonably priced too
for five ninety-nine you can buy most of them
some more exotic feature a large plastic gem
others are part of an exclusive holiday set
for decades, beanie babies have made a wonderful pet.
I hear currawongs threading
their melodic calls through
the trees, sewing a dark
into the cold air.
And far below,
a flock of white cockatoos
screech their noisy chaos
along the deepening shadows
of the valley floor.
They seem like dabs
of zinc white escaping
from a painting, sprouting
wings to lift them
from the canvas
and fly them to where
they flicker on the edge
of the unseen,
before dissolving forever
into the distances
of blue ultramarine.
Charred wood and ash
stink, after fires
in Garigal high-country.
A single crow cries
road-side, on a black tree-post
guarding road kill –
a round brown wallaby
with feet stuck-up.
Ash covers ash:
grey dust lies still...
until rain drizzles sweet liquid,
wets dirt, licks seeds, nudges life.
Seeds swell, unfold,
lift leaves to prick the air :
grass-whiskers spring up.
Fat globes of summer-rain spill
between sandy soil-crumbs
where roots sip silver water.
One tomorrow, black-skinned scarred tree-trunks will sprout leafy chests,
and white cockatoos will screech graffiti over skies patched with clouds.
Once more, warm lips of wallabies will graze over green grasses,
nibbling: blessed again.
Milky bright sky with rain in her net
Morning performance with native duet
Whip cracks and choo-choos crescendo in song
Spurring near aves to jolly along
The flightless young to pipe up and squawk
Easy like eagle or hoarse as the hawk!
Where cockatoos chase each other and chatter
Raindrops descend, and pitter-patter.
On the 1st day of Christmas my true love sent to me,
A koala in a gum tree
On the 2nd day of Christmas my true love sent to me,
Two parrakeets.
On the 3rd day of Christmas my true love sent to me,
Three Kangaroos hopping.
On the 4th day of Christmas my true love sent to me,
Four Cockatoos squawking.
On the 5th day of Christmas my true love sent to me,
Five Emu eggs.
On the 6th day of Christmas my true love sent to me,
Six Baileys bottles
On the 7th day of Christmas my true love sent to me,
Seven Fosters lager
On the 8th day of Christmas my true love sent to me,
Eight Johnny Walker Reds and a Koala in a gum tree.
On the 9th day of Christmas my true love sent to me,
Too drunk to remember what it was hic, but its gunna be a bonza holiday, hic. The koalas and me are sure to enjoy it. Happie Holadayys evry 1
Oh, so bluest the sky doth shine
A hint of the new season’s ploy,
Sweet November a springtime shrine
Grains of golden sands of pure joy.
Towards December’s hottest sun
Where the dust is stirred to a tune,
And winter waifs become undone
When gone the drowsy days of June.
Wild Lilac flowers bend their heads
Touch rainbows of unwasted weeds,
Swell the colours of feathered beds
As rainfall shrinks forsaking reeds.
End of year is the beginning
As nature moves in lucid tones,
Dawn’s chorus keeps the world spinning
While Cockatoos perch on their thrones.
Entered November, December Poetry Contest
Sponsor Karen Krutsinger.
poem wrote 15/11/2022
Dusk On the Murray River
A crimson red blanket hangs over the river, shrouding its steep muddy banks.
This is dusk on the Murray River, the Mississippi of this great land.
Fifteen hundred miles of slow-flowing water linking state to state and ocean to mountain.
What secrets do your Cod and Trout hide as they navigate your murky waters?
Night arrives quickly here in Echuca.
Dusk is brief at this place which means meeting of the waters.
Overhead Sulphur Crested Cockatoos gather in their masses, screeching their way into my thoughts as they swoop around me.
Darkness falls
I want to stay out as late as possible, delaying my return to a budget hotel with a kicked-in door.
My room in the Caledonian hotel is one of the worst places I have ever laid my head.
The grubby stained carpet is as brown as the river.
Unease comes over me as I try to settle on a lumpy bed.
Sleep will not come
I feel unsafe looking at the kicked-in door.
The sound of the birds fills my head.
on full volume, play at quality x720p
"War and Peace"
strange birds
flying freedom wings
it was a clear blue sky day
punctuated by white
surrendering
the clear point of morning
a pterodactyl drowning the drill
of cockatoos, galahs and magpies
bleeding bugles
into afternoons and long goodnights
in the darkest moments
light still sings
of war and peace
(LadyLabyrinth / 2022)
Australia Day, 26.1.22
vcb
AUSTRALIA DAY 26.1.2022 - Sydney Australia -
R.A.A.F. Flypast for Aust Day
https://youtu.be/l6gGxgMMznM
"On Some Far Away Beach" / Brian Eno
https://youtu.be/K29t_L3CO6A
we only wanted to be kids
not heroes.
we wanted to catch ships of clouds at the sky
not black seadevils in the drain.
we wanted lemons for lemonade
not salt for our wounds.
but there it came
the dramatic change of scenery
prohibition of dreams and innocence
he iron lung in the birth parlour
rabid dogs raiding the cathouse
curtains falling over our eyes
Mad Hatter suddenly cured & sane
Laura Palmer found safe and well
pitch-black darkness in the lighthouse
silver screen cockatoos on the loose
teddy bears in war with smartphones
hangmen having a morning espresso
moth children scared of Vincent Price
giant blood oranges with hematophobia
ballerina’s alcoholic husband tin soldier
drunk on moonshine from golden sunshine
such a wrong time to be a human being
paradoxically, we only wanted to be kids
at the wrong time
Very soon marmosets and moose
will get their vaccines.
A lone gnome fishes in a Koi pond.
The light of the moon
has been dimmed by a Chinese switch.
Elite bands of cockatoos
fight for free speech, but just for themselves.
Preening jackasses bray in the green rain
and the songs are all the same.
A fearful old man stammers in the dark.
So far the greater apes are in ascendance
however, a turtle and trumpet alliance
has formed a combo of resistance.
Four masks a day and a cup of instant propaganda
keep us hiding behind a surreal subterfuge.
Afghan warlords wander empty streets
handing out relief packages.
Birds rent-out tree space to killer bees.
Belfry’s are bankrupted by fleeing bats.
Harpies and stool pigeons
turn in their stools for further interrogation.
King Kong whimpers inside a skyscraper closet,
too shy and lonely now
to swat even the smallest of biplanes.
Three black cockies
Sitting in a tree,
Big black cockies
Noisy as can be.
Red-tailed cockies
Sharing all the news,
Love them all very much
My friends; black cockatoos.
Purple shadows dancing and laughing with clowns
How does it matter when the grim reaper smiles
Vultures and dragons fly missed horizon
Parrots and cockatoos squawk talk through wireless connections Verizon ™
And when it's all said done
Methodical
2/16/21
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr © 2021
Every lingo does evolve,
We borrow words, I'm told,
I have croissant, pizza and latte,
Pen pal in Beirut, I might say,
I live in Woollomooloo,
Where we parrot like cockatoos,
Now it's all English vocabulary,
Evolving to send overseas,
E-languages, you see!
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