In the Afterglow

by David Atkinson

When you travel towards Menindee Lakes,
you will know that the waterways,
quivering quilt, are in flood.

You have arrived when the district
has assembled and is vehement with brushstrokes
of seasonal water birds, but these are not your focus.

You will see that the large shallow sheets
are pale and passive, limbs of dead trees
emerging from the surface as stark skeletons.

In latticed sunlight an egret stands like a mantis
after a long excursion to the inland,
the tease of a breeze through seeding grasses

wilting in premature heat. A blanket of grasshoppers
pitches on the updraught, tacks across the backwater.
You might hear their chorus, a choral descant.

The desert is clothed with late sun.
At last you will sight what you came for,
a flock of fifteen red-tailed black cockatoos,

tame temperament, as they graze across
their wild domain. Their motivation might be limited
to survival but for observers a revelation.

You will weigh the wispy plumage,
take in each feathered filament.
You might observe the scraping squawks

and you will watch the flock,
at some unknown sign,
rise as one with easy authority,

no need for symmetry, and soar away,
their deep wing beats etched in memory,
across an ebbing inlet as the afterglow fades.