Cockatoos After Fire

by Mark O'Flynn 
for Kate Fagan

Against the empty storm clouds
those white cockatoos
like rents in canvas
drift through the air left by fire.
The clean sheets of their wings
vivid as charcoal on snow.
Acoustic cries fill the ashen void 
between scorched tree and leaden sky.

They strip the blackened bark
like metal at a car wreck
fossick with primitive impatience
on the verge of food.
What language do they croak?
what devious vernacular
of proclamation and waste?
Arranged phonetically with blundering

morphemes like hacksaws grumbling 
through the air’s dirty paragraph.
You lean from your window 
oppressed by rain
as one stone age cockatoo
in the face of desolation shrieks 
relentless greeting across the heavy sky
hello   hello   hello.

Mark O’Flynn’s novel The Last Days of Ava Langdon (UQP) was short listed for the Miles Franklin Award, 2017, the Prime Minister’s Literary Award as well as winning the Voss Literary Award, 2017. His most recent collection of poetry is Undercoat (Liquid Amber Press, 2022).