Tag: animals

• BLACK SWAN EVENT, ADVENTURE BAY

  Kayaking Captain Cook Creek,

  I still my paddle blades

  to approach a flotilla of swans

  and an Oxbridge syllogism

  fills the dripping pause,

  All swans are white,

  these birds are swans,

  these swans, therefore, are white.

   

  The black feathers which float before me

  flout the northern premise of the dons.

   

  I hunch to glide beneath a bridge’s concrete pillars.

  Dodging fishing lines, my thoughts reel in platelets of a time

  which bleeds down from Mount Cook and Mount Mangana:

  men in buttoned coats and breeches scooping

  water from this creek, ringing the woods with iron axes,

  blazing pademelons with muzzle loaders;

  and the Nuenone standing witness to a singular event

  which turned antipodean logic on its head:

   

  All men are black

  these strangers are men,

  these men, therefore, are …

  Beige as cowries?

  Pink, puce and blue as sunset?

  Ash white as revenant ancestors?

   

  Children splash and squeal in the curling fringe of ocean,

  blessed and cursed with scant rememberings of Truganini

  surviving her first horror.

  Swans quiver, flap wings, blow bugle beaks,

  trundle the creek mouth in a gawky lift off to an airborne arrowing,

  then they dip and settle, feather-soft yet wary,

  further out upon the sun-shocked bay.

   

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  Anne was the poetry editor of Birdsong, a celebration of Bruny Island birds, which includes Black Swan Event, Adventure Bay. This beautiful collection of poetry, essays and artworks was published by the Bruny Island Environment Network (BIEN) in 2014. It is now in its second edition, with the addition of an extra image by Michael Leunig: Holy Fool with Birds.

  Copies of Birdsong may still be available, but don’t delay – contact BIEN for more information.

  May 15, 2024

  animals, aquatic, birds, Bruny Island

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• AXOLOTL RAP

  Come and rap with me, the amazing axolotl,

  we can rap a little or rap A LOTTLE!

  I’m the larval stage of a salamander,

  but I don’t want to change and climb on your veranda,

  for I’m telling you now, with no ifs or maybes,

  we need no adult form for us to have babies.

   

  We have gills and six tentacles which waft around our head,

  our tentacles have tentacles, purple, brown or pink or red.

   

  We have a broad head, four legs and a tail

  and a superpower that’s been rarely known to fail,

  if we lose a limb or tail to a predator’s bite

  we can grow that bit again and set ourselves right.

   

  I’m not just a smiley face and a four-footed dancer,

  I’m helping science find a cure for cancer,

  for my superpower of regeneration

  could help humans grow back limbs after amputation.

   

  Come and rap with me, the amazing axolotl,

  we can rap it slowly or go FULL THROTTLE!

   

  Let me tell you one thing that really gets me riled,

  axolotls are nearly extinct in the wild.

  We come from the lakes of central Mexico,

  but home to those lakes we cannot go,

  for you humans have made an unwelcome contribution

  to our near extinction through expansion and pollution,

  and you’ve introduced carp and tilapia fish.

  Won’t you fish those monsters out and put them on a dish?

   

  Come and rap with me, the amazing axolotl,

  we can rap a little or rap A LOTTLE!

   

  People may need permits to keep me in Australia

  to prevent yet another ecological failure.

  Setting me free would earn you no praise

  for I’d endanger native critters in your waterways

  slurping fish, worms and insects without distinction,

  like tilapia and carp, I’d drive others to extinction.

   

  Come an rap with me, the amazing axolotl,

  we can rap it slowly or go FULL THROTTLE

  I’ll stay safe in a tank, but don’t put me in a bottle,

  I’m a critically endangered AMAZING AXOLOTL.

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  I am working on a collection of raps about freshwater creatures. Axolotyl Rap is one of them. What do you think? What creatures would you like to see poems about? Are they creatures who rap, or creatures who roll…? (Maybe you would like to think about what different forms of poetry can do to depict different kinds of creature, ideas, or anything.)

  May 15, 2024

  animals, aquatic, endangered, singable

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