Kakadu Wetlands is home to three million waterbirds
From May to October it houses the comb-crested jacana
Jabirk, egrets and brolga also take their respite here
Macquarie Marshes are used by the Wayilwan people.
They use the Macquarie for burial grounds and ceremonies.
Interconnecting lagoons and channels of Mareeba are bird-friendly.
They give sanctuary to the Australian pelican and crested tern.
Also the threatened home-southern bell frog. Wetlands rule!
The plunging line was?
going deeper, cutting close to
the bone. I was preparing
myself to be martyred
alive.
Prod me viciously, my
love, I want to die in your arms before
the dawn. It should be
too good to be true
for you.
Waterbirds. They are ready
to take a flight. Petal
by petal, sun will send you
the message. I am going to fade away
in moonlight.
Water hyacinth had the death secret.
Knife me gently. I will
meet my Apollo in dark.
Satish Verma
I hear that it’s raining in Washington State,
In London there's snow coming down
as I look out across a wide dusty plain,
where everything’s pastel or brown.
I heard reports of below freezing point
at Regina in Saskatchewan,
I look at a lake bed all shiny through salt
with water and waterbirds gone.
Nothing is moving except for some dust
where there’s no grass, not even a blade.
It’s hotter than hell amongst the bluebush,
when it’s forty degrees in the shade
I’m dreaming of waterfalls cascading down.
Swimming pools filled up with ice,
I’m wiping off sweat that beads on my brow
and think to myself… where is paradise?
Its forty degrees in the shade through the day,
and at night I am restless, beneath a sheet,
for it barely cools down, and so hard to sleep.
Yes it’s so hard to cope with the heat.
So if you are flooded or battling with snow,
and the cold winds are making you glum,
start thinking of summer and how good it feels,
and you pray that soon it will come.
I say good luck to you for its winter I yearn,
once the frost and fog has begun,
when it’s forty degrees, where there is shade…
and forty-five out in the sun.
A Violent Storm
It starts with dying leaves that litter lawns
All tumbled over in remorseless wind
Until at last, defeated, they collect
Behind the garden wall in tattered piles,
Discarded on a bleak deserted street
An empty cola can goes rattling past
Entrapped and powerless it bowls along
Its tinny clatter masked by mounting gale.
The clouds, as dark and grey as battleships
Amassed in fury, scud across the sky
Unleashing hail like bullets pounding earth
As scornful weather reaches boiling point
And branches, ripped asunder, turn and toss
Upon the lake that churns and boils with wrath
The hardy waterbirds, they hide in reeds
But where will tiny humming birds be safe?
As nature, wields her power, strength and might.
The storm, a deluge o’er the land has spread
To soak the fields so long deprived of rain
Endowing thirsty soil with healing wealth
Iambic pentameter
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