The Week it Rained Forever
The black-faced cuckoo shrike
the grey cloak of its shoulders
hunched against the weather,
sits weeping on the telegraph wire.
Its small, electric grief, trickles
some 40 feet into my left eye.
It becomes my sorrow.It has been raining all week.
The crows have been silenced,
their black mouths gagged with raincloud.
Cars slip around corners leaving
indicator glass spread like tarot cards
on the greasy deck of the road.
The future is written in oil.It seems the earth is mostly water.
The clawed feet of the cuckoo shrike
hum like a pair of tuning forks.
It seems fidgety up there on the wire.
As if it would take flight rather than
stare down the elements like some
enamelled weather-cock.From its perch the shards of glass
shine like red & orange berries.
Mt Coot-ha is hidden by the sky
of the mind as I wipe the sorrow
from my eye like sleep.
I never notice the bird evaporate
beneath a thunderstorm.Later, I watch for blue skies &
the crows to rise from the dead.
