Wattlebird (September)

September pollinates business-like, post-bushfire. Morning above the big ocean wattlebirds arrive in the banksias. One pendulums on topmost, finding its beak in every nook and bristle of a wiry cone. Wind helps the effect. Bird picks and chooses each flower in loopy fashion, leaping about towers of branches. Upsidedown the other threads fibres, shifts sideways lithe grey, an acrobat about the sun. Artists have the devil of a time perfecting evolution’s simple balancing act, plodding watercolour and words. Already morning fills with sounds of ocean and greatest hits radio at a new construction site and the cackles of departing wattlebirds.