Category Archives: Sky Poetics

First Storm

Evening walking along the clifftops by the river, storm blowing north to south further west, and now south; the weather still warm, more like a tropical low dipping down, though slightly past us, than a cold front come in from below to batter. There is lightening there, to the south—horizontal fork lightening stretching from cloud to cloud, south to north, like I don’t think I’ve ever seen. Then ten seconds in between. And then the thunder comes. There are cumulo-nimbus down that way, with sheets of rain we watch from the top of Cyprus Hill. 

(And was this the day we also saw the first rainbow of the season to the east, fairly faint and partial?) 

We walk back along the clifftop. And as we start to turn away from the water, my eye is caught by a large rippling bubble—an aftermath of displaced water, almost the size of a dinghy—dolphin I’m thinking, but nothing (re)emerges, there by the edge of the sandbar—Katie thinks shark. I watch and watch for minutes, but nothing disrupts the surface of the water again.

While this morning the birds are gone from the lake once more; ibis all gone, shelducks gone, wayan the white faced gone, don’t see any sandpipers or dotterels, only two janjarak black-winged stilts remain on the shoreline. 

Raptors and Darter

Some days it seems you cannot walk out of your house without some kind of raptor darting overhead—this time either hobby or peregrine falcon—I’ve never been too good with raptors. And then, a moment later, another. And then, to top off all this darting, an actual darter.

Different Chases

A strangely unsettled morning of bird chasings in which I see, in different places, jakalak the butcher bird chasing koolbardie the magpie, then later koolbardie the magpie chasing manatj the corella, then a big bunch of—murderous you might say—wardong crows go chasing one another.

Satellites

Sitting under clear-yet-treed nighttime camping skies we look up the long trunks of them to the blinking of the stars above. And right where Orion has done up his belt, right where the snout of nyingarn the echidna pokes into the black holes of space looking for ants, a friend spots a satellite passing through, north west to south east, then another a few seconds later on the same line, then another, then another—a dozen at least in relatively short succession, almost all of them following the same line; same way that the sun and moon and planets all more or less follow the same line, with the zodiac moving more slowly beyond them. Except, here, it is some other line altogether, so much faster, irregular—something man-made amongst nature’s rhythms—rhythms we at first helped fix, and now move and bend to our own will. Where is the lawful next?

While Looking for Birin Birin

While looking for birin birin the rainbow bee-eater in kartagarrup Kings Park—at first between burned-out and non-burned section of bushland, then moving into all unburned area—seeing there by the way birin birin in numbers, their green chests and mostly-orange heads with dark eye line, flittering in medium size and triangular wings powerfully through the canopy, pausing on branches, longer honey-eater type beaks, making a sound like cicadas—I come across three very large karak red-tailed black cockatoos on a female kwell sheoak branch. One karak with almost fluorescent yellow-green dots walking slowly, languidly up a branch, effortlessly snapping with its beak single thin sticks that lie in its slow upward march towards the nuts at the end of the branch, arriving there to snap again with beak and grab with claw the nutted and straight-leaved edge of the tree, holding firm with foot while picking at the seeds, its large beak like one giant incisor from top and another from bottom, coming together in a point to crush the little seeds within the nut. I try to feel what it would be like if all my teeth were condensed into one giant incisor, going beyond the two front teeth of the mouse into a full front-of-headedness, full top-of-headedness. The bird belongs to this part of us. Belongs to the part of the world coming down from the peripheries to land for a moment upon the earth. This nerve-sensed-ness. And the tree—in this case the kwell—rooted to the earth, with its slow and gradual growing up and outness, in stem and branches, contractions into flowerings, which for the kwell happens for nearby male plants, followed in the female by fruitful nut expansion with seed within. The nut of the kwell a final expanding outwards that seeks also for a kind of longing for something coming from the wide skies above—not just a contraction into seed, but a longing for another kind of meeting. And this day the meeting comes from karak the red-tailed black cockatoo—from the wider periphery reaching down, and finding the seed within the outward edges of the sheoak—eating, scattering—something touched by the heights, by light, by thinking from above, then deposited back to earth now in fallen bits from mouths, or later in what is excreted. Marri trees; other trees the same. Heaven and the earth in exchange. Our thinking watches on, observing a scene metabolised in us through that which stands firmly on the earth.

Kathmandu Sun

Climbing the forested foothills above Kathmandu amongst the different varieties of pines, some rhododendrons, planted raspberries and even kiwi fruit, walking a ridgeline, it’s easy to hear and sometimes find with the eyes a whole range of different birds—from black kites circling high above, eight together some days, swallows darting through the canopy, small birds with white eyes, tiny birds they call tits, grey-headed warblers, long-tailed minivets bright as glowing coals in the nighttime fires, small birds with yellow breasts, blackbirds, crows, other long-tailed friends—all out with the morning sun, singing, darting, sitting on branches above the ridge, diving down the other side, belonging, it seems, to the outing of the sun. And then maybe you’ll see bees smaller and larger, black and yellow on raspberry and other flowers. And maybe on the ground, on tiny white flowers there’ll be a butterfly orange or white, or even one I saw a bluey grey, fluttering quickly to finally slowly alight on flower, folding up the outerside of its now brown wings, disappearing almost, leaflike, only to fly on in a small blue cloud again. Or maybe there’ll be a tiny ladybug red and black on large green leaf, or even folding up its wings after landing on the dusty clay soil. All of them much harder to find on cloudy, colder days. But on this, sunny warm day of early spring, they seem to have been called up and out—seem to have risen from the dark and the cold and the shadows…with the morning sun. 

Beings of higher places, it seems, alighting on all the trees and plants which wait for their arrival, tethered as they are to Earth.

Kathmandu Haze

In the Kathmandu morning valley, on days clear of clouds, you can clearly see from forested foothills above the haze of pollution and smoke sitting on the city like a blanket—a layer of orangey brown that obscures most of the city but doesn’t cut off the views of the highest peaks of the Himalayas beyond. And then, as the day progresses, the sun pours in, the valley warms, the traffic increases, and gradually the hazy blanket rises, climbing up the view of the mountains beyond, the hills your standing on obviously engulfed, all the time the smoky hazy line rising higher until, come noon or early after, the peaks of the mountains can no longer be seen. But clearly into view rises below: Kathmandu.

Back of the Head

Sometimes I find when I visit other places I realise how clear the light is in Western Australia. In other places the horizon often seems hazy, muted, softly defined. But in South Western Australia the light is so clear it’s almost as if you can see beyond the horizon, then beyond the next one, all the way around, and around, until you spy, finally, in one startling faroff vision, the back of your own head looking on.

Sky Thieves

The last couple of nights along the river I have walked right under the downward gaze and flapping of a raptor. Two nights ago, the large osprey flew right above me, all white bellied and brown eyebrowed, feathers somewhat askew, heading downriver, but destined to turn back again to its nest upstream. He looked down through me to the shoreline beside us, then disappeared behind a tree by the jetties; I didn’t see him reappear, and couldn’t find him when I looked. He may well be the same one who sits sometimes on the first lights above the bridge, or who grabs fish by the boat ramp on the otherside, flying low to the water in the centre of the river inland with its catch in its feet.

Last night we walked more upriver, and at a little lookout the slightly smaller form of a black shouldered kite came into view, more manicured than the haggled looking osprey, black underwing tips, black eye, hovering right above us, beak to the southwesterly, looking past us to the shoreline below, showing his black shoulders when he shifted further upriver, then gliding off inland—maybe the same who sits on the lights above the trainline by the beach some days, or further up the coast, hovering.

All the time these birds seemingly appearing from and disappearing back into the heights of the sky above, coming from it, made from it, not daring even, it seems, to touch the ground but only to take from it, or from the water in the form of fish, something that it can speedily take back to its skyhouse and nest—a thief from the skies above, plundering what the earth gives up from below, gives up from the depths.

The Colours of Summer

Recently I’ve seen the tea tree flowers all twisted and circling, white and lightly scented, with bees. I’ve seen the paperbark begin their march to a seemingly early opening of similar flowering. I’ve seen the towering canopy of marri trees, all white and powder coated, starlike in the day. I’ve seen the red of what I assume are yorgums opening bright and forcefully. And I’ve seen the yellow of illyarrie pushing through their fiery caps also seemingly early.

I’ve seen the colours of birak—the first summering. The white of the too-bright light of this city. The red of the warmth of this place, firelike and flaming. The yellow of the inbetween-ness, of a more-evening sun gently setting, more like the next season seeping in.