The Soundless Cries of 50 Orange-Bellied Parrots

By night, when the stars flicker across the blackened heap

Lustrous blue feathers shutter and take flight.

The Orange-bellied Parrots' thermal colours now a murmur in the wind.

Whispers of creaking wood and of quivering leaves

Of Smithton Peppermints, the air sweet of eucalyptus

Have all but withered away.

Once waves churned into the sides of a precipice

Gorging at its flesh of dirt, clay and stones.

Now mortality by collision with concrete walls

That spark an eruption of pernicious decay.

An affliction that spreads through their fingertips

Along the coasts and heathlands, beauty swept away.

Wintering grounds stripped naked, eviscerated,

See, it is greed under the guise of passion.

Forced solitude, man’s punishment.

One more is swept into the undertow 

Of jarring steel and glass unseen. 

A brittle figure left dismantled, maimed.

As birdsong falls hush, an arduous reminder

Of a dwindling presence lost in the throes against man.