Unblinkered

Robyn Rowland

They zoom like Grand Prix drivers
spinning at bends, testing angles.
So fast they mimic speeding rainbows 
and their squeaking song is all joy.
One lovely thing, I told myself.
Each day, just one lovely thing will 
be my ballast. And they keep coming. 

After the rainbow lorikeets, crimson
rosellas land, more certain, as if mature,
no hurry in their callistemon searches.
So red, they become the flower itself.
Above the proud strelitzia flaming orange 
at the back fence, green grass parrots disturb
crystal drops of emerald light the rain splayed.

Today, casual, king parrots, bright scarlet heads, 
viridescent feathers, indigo blue rump, thrum 
their wings, screech, declare themselves here
in case my eyes were struggling with the heaviness 
of being trapped, in case amazement had forsaken me. 
All this through my high window, like some wild 
movie, coloured birds flitting around our backyard!

                                    Imagine! Why look to anywhere else?

Robyn Rowland: lived in Ireland and Turkey until late 2019; now in Australia. She has 11 poetry books, most recently Under This Saffron Sun – Safran Güneşin Altında, (Knocknarone, Ireland 2019), This Intimate War Gallipoli/Çanakkale 1915 – İçli Dışlı Bir Savaş: Gelibolu/Çanakkale 1915 (repub. Spinifex Press, Australia, 2018) bilingual,Turkish translations Mehmet Ali Çelikel. Her poetry appears in national/international journals in eight countries, forty-five anthologies, eight editions of Best Australian Poems. She has read in India, Portugal, Ireland, UK, USA, Greece, Austria, Bosnia, Serbia, Turkey and Italy, and is published in translation. She is filmed reading for National Irish Poetry Reading Archive, James Joyce Library, UCD. YouTube. https://robynrowland.com