Legacy
i. Extinct
These birds have only parchment wings now
deft and delicate strokes painted by a man
with an eye for detail a precise individual
delighting in minutiae
A man who marvels at the complexity of each feather
the fragile shivery quality of each separate barb
at how the tiny iridescent shards of colour stitch in the light
and make the whole wing shine
How gravely he holds the still warm corpse
turning it from hand to hand, extending each wing
examining the underside, the belly
the curled feet, the flaccid neck
How gently he places it on the bench
to tag, weigh, measure — recording
each detail in his leather-bound book
before he turns aside
with an emotion he might, if pressed, have called reverence
and sets to work with pen and brush
omitting the smudge of crimson
on the pale breast feathers
omitting the fall of the bird to the ground
that very morning
when Thomas (his shooter)
had dropped it with a single shot.
ii. Pest
This morning it all seems very English in my garden
what with the overcast sky, the chickens
on the back lawn and the fox who stared straight at me
through the window as I rose half-asleep to see what had set the chickens off
And I, colonial to my bones, forgot he was vermin
feral, noxious — fated to be culled,
forgot he was anything other than a villain of fairy-tales
and held my dog’s collar as I held his gaze
He stood assured, not even hungry,
just checking things out, never doubting his right to belong —
to take what is offered to him willing to adapt
Remembering the chickens, I let the dog go
but the fox was long gone, loping lazily
up the hill to his home among eucalypt and lantana
yet another new arrival that has made its place here
without asking without shame
And of the three of us — fox, lantana, European
I wonder who least understands this land
who has rendered the most harm
who most deserves the poison
‘Legacy’ won the Dangerously Poetic Press Byron Bay Festival Writers Poetry Prize in 2011 and was published in the anthology Wild Honey (Publisher Dangerously Poetic Press).