by Ross Jackson

When a heel of processed bread hits the deck
a hockey match of pecks ensues between diners ‘chair legs.
Three flustered pigeons give way to an ibis.
Clacking beaks of four different species
compete for crumbs in the spaces around our feet.
What the scribes of the bible may have meant
by ‘the quick and the dead’?

A female diner, meanwhile, attractive to lorikeets
they skim up to her table in threes
for several sachets of brown sugar
retained for their morning tea;
colourful opportunists doomed to die too soon.