Jeltje Fanoy #49 birds

we love it, a special treat,
once, or twice a year,
tearing off the branches,
all together,
rising up from the trees,
black cockatoos,
yellow-tailed and musical,
waves of plaintive
'plee-erk plee-erk plee-erk'


birds fly over,
from one big tree
to the next, remnants
from the seventies,
they're right, perhaps
we all talked to trees,
the birds came back
to keep us company,
spotted the flowers
and gum-nuts
from the air,
the lorikeets, exuberantly,
claimed Studley Park
(once a mental asylum)
grass parrots, camouflaged,
rrrrrrrrrrt! as green as the grass,
and the wattlebirds landed,
so many wattles, everywhere,
we all went crazy, far too many,
they talk to us, loudly and raucously,
such an abundance of flowers


closer to the ground,
Blackbirds look
silently for worms,
fly high to vantage points
on top of our roofs, sing,
for six months of the year,
in European-type stanzas