Ink and erasure
My shoulder boasts a palm —
palm cockatoo, all music and crest,
slapping my skin in a punch line.
I shall sell my piratical skin
for historic ornithology.
Bauxite is singing
on history's grey shoulder,
sweet and repetitive
as any canned soda.
P.S. Cottier
Apparently a sub-species of the remarkable palm cockatoo will be further threatened by a new bauxite mine. We value aluminium more than birds, it would seem.
This bird, which plays music on trees with sticks it fashions for the purpose, has long fascinated me, as the tattoo might indicate! An earlier poem I wrote about the palm cockatoo can be read here.
