Today at the lake
I spent more time in the one spot
than I have been lately.
At first it seemed like there was
just the usual janjarak black
winged stilts—four in all today.

But after a while, the rushes
and sedges and paperbark branches
in front of me came to life.
Usually filled only with grass birds or 
reed warblers, now there were
wrens, as well as small green birds,
round, and in some numbers—so much so
that I would have called them silvereyes,
if not for their lack of silver eyes.
And then a slightly larger bird 
with a tail verging on fan,
like a fantail,
but not quite,
and with white eyebrows above the eyes
like a wagtail,
though not quite as white.

I reflected then, on the great range
of beingness—the spectrums that exist between
one known thing and another…inhabited
by being.
Humbling. Inspiring. 

At that moment a yet—Pacific black duck—
came in and landed with a jolt on the dry mud
by the edge of the water that’s left.

And I spotted two tiny moving angles
by the norther tip of the lake’s water—
one looked like a dotterel, with black sash
across its chest, the other more like a sandpiper.
But then one flew over the other
and they took off together
and I couldn’t tell you with my naked eyes
whether it was one or the other.

The world is full.
And then fuller again.

Infinite, given the right conditions.

***  

PART 2

All of part one while a helicopter
hovered above Claremont
like a testing distraction.
Can you stay focussed?
Life amid life.

And only upon reading the newspaper
the following day was it clear
what had happened:
a man had driven a car off Claremont jetty 
into the river.