Finding that the Superb Fairy Wren has not disappeared from our city but has just retreated to a last safe vestige of the Creek reserve is my gift for today.
Even so man encroaches as close as building are permissable into this fragile habitat.
Yesterday I discovered another new track in legal safe walking distance from my place.
It is the fourth new track I have explored since the pandemic lockdown. I have been here 5 years and just find myself walking familiar ways .
At this new discovery of a world away from the world I was so happy
I felt like shouting my delight from the mountain top but knew that was impossible then I thought of telling the world through face book but decided against that as so many put things up and it depends on other readers moods if it works or not. It can be seen differently from how I meant. So I decided I will recored it for myself on my blog and if it is seen well and good. But it is a gift of this Autumn walking time, it is a gift of this slow down and self isolate time for me and of course it is a gift from the Waitara Creek Bush Walking Track.
Along the way, before I climbed down to explore the bush, I enjoyed the thrill of autumn colours and some wonderful Camellias so picturesque with the carpet of petals falling.
And a wonderful shot of a lorikeet. It looked up at me and I captured it.
I felt so happy but the happiest I was finding the superb fairy wrens that I thought had left our city because their habitat is destroyed . A dubious reason some agree some dont that our bush and scrub and undergrowth is burnt in winter as a fire-hazard reduction . The creek is an exemption and hence my discovery. I wrote a poem to celebrate.
Can you see the trill of his tail?
in search of the small birds
the superb fairy wrens
the lyre bird
scratching at the forest floor
and singing
every song she could mimic
pulls me up
i fail to see her
rustling along
at the edge of the creek
which was singing its own song
a rainy flow and fall song
delicious to hear after
the lament of summer silence
it is one of those places
with haze of blue gum air
that McCubbin could have painted
with deepest space
of a child lost amidst the threat
of muscular rocks
but here softened
by moss and maiden hair fern
shadowed by tall tree ferns
still in their stillness
eerie and lonely
i disturb a brush turkey
who trips across my rough track
like a jazz dancer across a stage
then i hear them!
i stopped to touch the pink dimpled trunk
of a river gum
looked up at its grandeur
that makes me feel so small
and catch
the trill twittering of small birds
in the undergrowth
to the far side of the creek
i still
became one with the trees
and watch the play like ritual
it was a salutation to the whole world
only they could capture it in this bush
as they whirr needle-like
dance along branches
wings blur blue and brown
flirted fluted fanned
their tiny tales teased
maybe for them even I was their audience
but once again the birds
teach me enchantment from a distance
and they were there
now they are gone
so many times
i worry about our tiny birds
lost from our city by the necessity
of fire hazard reduction
of their habitat
a case of survival of the fittest
in this case the biggest
for me it was the gift
to know they are not gone
just retreated
and i am reminded once again
of Mary Oliver’s words –
walk slowly bow often
When the noted poet John Egan asked me to collaborate with him on a chap book with the idea of presenting it to be published with Picaro Poets (an arm of Ginninderra Press) I was very affirmed and excited. It quickly became a challenge for our poems needed to have a thread of interconnectedness and for me I always want a book that someone in the future can pick up and read and find meaning and hopefully a spark of something I like to call ‘the more than”
