for Tracy
Dozens of little black cormorants daylight roosting
on the dead-in-the-lake tree with its duckweed halo
the suburbs close around them with stilled ibises watching.
These cormorants are florets open and closed, some contemplating
difference as close friends dry their wings, the ß-keratins offering sap-flow—
dozens of little black cormorants daylight roosting.
Between the lakeshore and an islet, the cormorant tree is preparing
for mass ascension, that lift of surprise or agitation, a threat that rows
through suburbs close around it with stilled ibises watching.
So many encounters with humans who can’t reach its branching
into the close air of all-breath, held together by slick diving birds of shared ego—
dozens of little black cormorants daylight roosting.
It’s the weight of numbers that shows the faith of death’s shaping—
the ringwork of growth that adds invisibly after the scherzo,
the suburbs close around them with stilled ibises watching.
White ibises fall to haunches to study behaviour of the tree in its weirding
way of life in death its offering of sanctuary, the monopoly, the expo!
Dozens of little black cormorants daylight roosting
as suburbs close around them with stilled ibises watching.
John Kinsella’s recent books include the poetry volume Open Door (UWAP, 2018) and the novel Lucida Intervalla (UWAP, 2018). He is Professor of Literature and Environment at Curtin University, and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.
