four poems from a suite of 12

A white bird mp3

for Jude Philp

What strikes us both is a Willow Ptarmigan, capsised on its side

onto a beady black eye; its feet are furred, no sign of claws,

“The white plumage, full time or seasonal?” I ask, thinking of hares,

then notice the other dozen birds are all on their backs

and none healed with prosthetic eyes. This pretty bird looks well,

head perched on an upright neck, good enough to be a decoy,

and if I look past the barred tail? I see snow sculpting trees

before the sun pulls the rug out from under the icing,

and the bird flying through a blizzard, and Kepler, court astrologer

walking back from the castle, noticing the snowflakes on his coat

were all six-sided, and muttering “in that we say Nature plays”;

whereas Hooke reported, "the most simple and plain operation of Nature".

The bird flies past us all straight into the bank of snow

so as to leave no footprints for hunters to follow.

Mermaids, gryphons & unicorns

"In science there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting."

Lord Rutherford

Trophies of imagination, a British Guiana Cottonreel,

Hawaiian Missionary, or Roubles (with and without lightning)

are locked up at night when darkness feeds the mind with dreams

of flight. Ideals of control, prediction and repetition seek

reversibility in the experimental sciences, but the rest

have not that freedom, hence our vast ambition for economy,

engineering triumphs & disasters, exotic food (roast flamingo

Roman orgies) and exotic décor (pink flamingo Americana)

and novelty (the platypus the British Museum thought faked).

We are sealing too much of the shrinking world

punctured by steel bolts, scarred by clear felling, chemicals and oil.

The sacred is not sacred. Value clings to celebrity, eviscerated

language tunes to sales and slogans, swallows don’t arrive right

and birds are now singing much shorter faster songs.

Equus Caballus mp3

The jar of liquid fills with light, a hologram takes shape

escaped from a bestiary, skin pale as a unicorn’s stretched

in folds, the dainty muscle definition on the hindquarters

tapers to beautiful forms, sculpted hooves, translucent limits.

The body is squashed to fit, chin resting on front legs crossed.

When I turn the jar, he shakes his head, the nostrils flare,

the eyes almost open. Above the muzzle, two flaps lift as if a horn

will emerge (like a narwhals’ weighed in gold by medieval quacks).

The umbilical cord floats like the lifeline of an astronaut spinning

into deep space, swimming through ontogeny, life passing before the eyes.

The foetus, gentle and still, is obtained only through extreme means,

but unicorns, fierce and fast, are only caught by cunning.

The best method is for a hunter to lead a young girl to a shady glade,

their habitat; the beasts are spell bound in the presence of a virgin.

The louse and the albatross went to sea

Coleridge immortalised the albatross, the louse still awaits its bard.

Macleay Museum sign

Ses ailes de géant l'empêchent de marcher.

Baudelaire, L'Albatros

Forster (father and son), naturalists on Cook’s second voyage

hunted penguins and shot a wandering albatross (or two), discovering

two species of lice that fly a thousand miles a day on aerodynamic wings;

the slender one is fixed here to a yellowing preserved slide, the other lost.

The bird has been preening in the land of suspended animation

standing on large tobacco-stained feet sailors once sewed into

baccy pouches. A feather lies loose in its plastic home marked in texta

gigantus, but probably ‘wandering’ from white flecking

on chocolate wings. When we hear that long-line fishing

risks 19 of 21species a shadow falls informing reasonable terror

(not 9/11) (Coleridge felt its shade). Forster (the son)

respected scientist, left Mainz for France, politicised

and joined the Jacobin Club, but disowned by family and friends

died alone in Paris within a year. The Terror broke his heart.