A few weeks ago I saw the single cygnet
with mother
in the northern part of the lake
shood off
by a coot.
Today the fluffy grey
of the cygnet is beginning to turn dark
along its neck.
It is now diving down
to pull up its own grass,
growing larger
as the water falls.
Nearby
there is a single coot.
And this day,
the cygnet
turns to the coot
and shoos it off.
Author Archives: jbstubley
The Western Stream
Standing at the lake
by the gazebo in Kambarang
second spring
again.
I’m pondering
the way the lake
is like an eye
in the ecosystem looking out—
I’m wondering what it’s looking upon.
Is the body the whole catchment?
Is the lake the whole catchment?
Once it looked upon a cosmos
full of life and wording.
Now that same life is in the Earth,
wording forth, like a spring.
This place is not a spring,
but the deeper springing
is here yet.
I’m pondering the stream
that flows into the world
from the East.
I’m pondering this older,
Indigenous stream.
And I’m pondering
the Western one.
The Western one is newer,
and yet needs to begin
to move,
to meet the other streams
more truly,
at greater depth.
Where are those who truly
stand in this stream?
As I’m pondering this a turtle rises,
sticking its head above the waterline,
then quickly dives again.
It does this three times,
and is gone.
Waiting on the Waders
Last weekend we see a ngalkaning
the nankeen rufous night heron
flying by
in the daytime
over the lake.
Two days ago I spotted a single janjarak
black-winged stilt
huddled by the slowly-growing
shoreline on the south end
beneath the figs.
Yesterday I saw a little cloud
of four small dots
flying low across the water
from the north,
in little gasping flaps.
Four janjarak.
While off to the eastern edge,
in the furthest corner of my eye,
all elegant and white,
koorodoor the great
egret.
Today, in the northern section,
a single rufous heron,
drifted by,
followed by his gentle
honkinsh sound.
All these last months
the water has been so high
that even kwirlam the swamphen
has been forced up
onto the golf course
and parks, eating mown grass.
When they do swim, they are so slow,
their feet not webbed—
if they have chicks, the chicks
are faster.
The lake is now coming slightly off its highest tide,
the breathing in past its deepest depth.
The very top of the pole of the measuring gauge
not quite met. Somewhere between 2.1 and 2.2 metres
now dipping, slightly,
though we’re not quite down to numbers—
the last one being 2 metres flat.
And yet, the very first of the waders—
not yet any wayan white-faced herons—
beginning to come back
with the first
of the lake’s edges.
Yerrigan Again
Today at the gazebo
there’s sunlight,
some shade,
and the flatter side
of a south-westerly wind.
I can see some of the grass below
and keep an eye out for turtles.
A man arrives and says to his walking partner:
“I’m just going to see if there are any turtles.”
He sticks his head over the eastern edge a while—
under where the swallows enter their nest—
and then the west side,
and goes.
I’m watching a single cygnet try to pluck
some of the strands of grass
from its mother,
then father,
then mother again.
Then there’s the kadar episode.
Eventually I too turn to go,
noticing a woman photographing
a single swan, preening itself
on a small piece of shoreline
in the shade.
A turtle would be nice to see,
(maybe I think ‘and a nice photo’).
So I start scanning for one,
then think of how that changes
one’s whole experience—
when one goes out especially looking
for something—and I’m reminded of my
time as a dolphin spotter.
Don’t get me wrong, I think
both can be done.
But the inner gesture
is the one to really watch.
So I cease my extractive scanning
and look back over at the woman
photographing the swan
as I walk up the little bridge to the shore.
And just then, having given up
the search for anything,
I spot a turtle
on the western side.
I cannot help myself—
I call over to the woman—
“turtle” and point down
as he sticks his head
above the water.
She nods her head,
seeming to not
understand.
I point again.
He lingers,
then begins to go back down.
She seems interested and slowly comes over.
The turtle is moving gradually lower
but I can still see him
as he goes.
I continue pointing.
“Turtle.”
She says nothing,
and I’m not sure if she can see.
I take off my polarised glasses
and can’t see much.
I offer her mine.
She fumbles with a ‘thank you’
and a nod—Japanese?
And then the turtle is gone.
I move to go.
She stays on.
I say “have a good day.”
She smiles again: “thank you.”
And stays looking at the water
as I head off.
***
That makes four times this last month—
once popping up, once swimming,
once apparently dead near the jetty,
and this morning.
At least two, as many as four.
Kadar the Musk Duck
A couple of days ago
I stood by the gazebo
as kadar the musk duck preened itself
to the east.
A couple of people joined me there—
a girl and her mother.
They were looking at it,
wondering what it was.
Without asking me specifically
I volunteered up:
“It’s a musk duck.”
She repeated it:
“Musk duck.”
And asked:
“Is it only the males
who have that flap?”
A good question,
I thought to myself.
“Yes, and that one is pretty small,
so I guess it’s an adolescent.”
“I’ve never seen one before.”
“The first time I saw one,
I thought it was a platypus.”
We look a little longer
and eventually they go their way.
Today, kadar is back,
coming up out of the murky
depths, just as a woman
and her elderly mother
arrive at the gazebo.
This time I resolve to say nothing
unless asked, feeling I might sometimes
step on others’ freedom
of discovery.
But as I do this, the woman asks me:
“Has it got something in its mouth?”
“No, that’s its bill flap or lobe.
Sometimes he puffs it up for his
call.”
“Wow, I’ve never seen one before.”
“He spends a large amount of time
under water.”
Grasses
Past the top of the hill, upriver,
for some reason I’m called to notice more
the ground beneath my feet.
Grasses:
ones that look like
little stalks of dwarf wheat,
still green.
Others, same height, looking more like
tiny, flat trees with double seed-leaves springing
opposite each other,
like they’ve been flattened in a book.
Then ones like tiny umbrellas with their
fabric ripped off in the wind,
the frame still standing.
And the seeded leftovers of the
so-called cape-weed, ready for
harvest by galahs and cockatoos.
Many plants part of the one plant,
life-filled and blooming.
Dancing Not Dancing
Today I go further upriver
on the incoming tide,
with the wind.
I walk past the native verge plants
and mansions,
and river.
I walk up the hill under the power line,
and even before I reach the top
I’m thinking of
the dancing of those men
who stopped
in 1879.
What started then?
And suddenly I feel the line that carried the dancing.
and the line that carried something beyond.
I feel the lines meeting in me.
The same or similar.
Differently.
Dolphin Knowledge
I spend the morning in an online meeting
where for much of the time people exchange opinions
and I can’t help feeling
that reality hovers slightly farther
afield.
Perceiving reality must surely be
the goal.
Something of the living force of this thought
fills me this Tuesday afternoon,
and carries me upriver.
I see the peppermints in flower.
The coastal daisy-bush.
The tea trees.
The line in the river
designating the different
flowing of water,
sometimes salty clear,
sometime brackish
and slightly more fresh.
And there,
running along the edge of it,
is a pod of dolphins,
one a youngster fully jumping
clear of the water,
another, tiny,
gliding by the shoulder
of its mother.
A Kwirlam Tail
Yesterday I walked the path on the southern edge of the lake
under the Moreton Bay figs, past
where yet the Pacific black ducks,
marangana the wood ducks,
maali the swan and cygnets,
kidjibroon the coot,
and maybe a few others,
like ngoonan the grey teal,
have been overdosing on falling figs
that land in the water with a plop.
From there I stayed under the figs,
eventually cutting my own path
through where they sprayed ‘slasher’—
an organic weed burner a few weeks back—
closer to the fenceline by the water’s edge,
towards the jetty.
At one point, not far from the jetty, under the final fig
to the west, I felt something following me,
and turned to find kwirlam the purple swamp hen
on my tail. I wouldn’t say chasing, necessarily, for when
I stopped and turned around he also stopped
and looked at me. Then when
I walked, he too began to walk, drawing slightly closer.
This happened a couple of times.
At first I wasn’t sure if he was looking for things
in my upturned footprints,
or if he thought I might have food,
or if I’d come a bit too close to some of his young.
In any case, I’d never seen him do this to anyone
before.
Arriving at the jetty, he seemed to peel off and go about
his business.
Today, I found myself headed in a similar direction,
without thinking.
And there, standing under the trunk of the fig,
was kwirlam.
I immediately apologised, knowing that this lake is his—
one of the few birds that remains all dry summer—
and returned to the path.
Re-arriving at the jetty I looked back along the fenceline
as he walked along it also. And there, between him and another hen
were a couple of tiny chicks, all black.
Social Nature
We seem to be able to easily
accept the idea
that in an organisation
like a company
a board of directors or similar
sets the culture of the whole—
that the ‘idea‘ they hold guides
all the parts—guides the rest.
Yet in nature we seem to want to get to ever-smaller
increments as means by which we seek
to understand what really drives the whole—
cells, molecules, microbes, atoms, nuclei.
This, in a company, would be akin
to finding the smallest item on a balance sheet—
finding the smallest asset
such as a paperclip
and saying that this is what really determines
the behaviour of the company
as a whole.
It is the idea that guides the company—
that guides any social organisation.
Likewise, it is the idea that guides
the natural organisation.
It is the idea that guides the meta story,
the story, the poem,
not the words and letters.
That the whole is more than the sum of the parts
is true enough, but it is the ‘whole’ that
determines the direction of the organism
through coming into being in each of the parts.
And so we come to the whole—
to the idea—
via the parts.
The idea in the words and letters,
in the animal organism,
in the landscape organism,
in the social organism,
in the human organism.
Why stand on our heads
when we can walk on our feet?
John Stubley 