Monday, December 12, 2016

Magdalena Ball #28: Bird Brain

Bird brain

intelligence isn’t only
for domination, destruction, dissolution

bird song is the backdrop you don’t see
a dozen species going off at once

it’s a bush party, to which I’m not invited
though the music takes over the neighbourhood
percussive neurons firing

playing loudly till dusk, especially the kookaburras
who started up at dawn, disappeared into a midday
worm siesta, and are at it again as evening approaches

as for the parrots, they can count up to six
and crows can do algebra

the social life in my little forest is teeming
intricate territorial calls, clicks, a syntactic pattern of hoots, wails, caws

bird poetry, should such a thing exist, might be solely performance based
a nightly slam of visual cues, sound, and rhythm
vibrating on each side of the syrinx

apparently birds also can feel empathy
a quality homo sapiens are running a little low on of late
so who’s the bird brain?

1 comment:

  1. This is wonderful Magdalena. Very early in this year of poems I tried to convey a similar message in a poem. You have done it far better than I did and you made me smile and chuckle and join the chorus.

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