Poems from Nature

The Blackest Thing on Land

…is a bird

“File:Victoria’s Riflebird courtship — Lake Eacham — Queensland S4E7598 (22372409022).jpg” by Francesco Veronesi from Italy is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

The blackest thing on land is a bird

Not a raven, washed with midnight blue,

Or a crow in shades of cinder and charcoal.

It is not a coot or a cormorant.

The blackest thing on land is a bird-of-paradise.

—

Light skids on a raven’s wing,

Trips over its own feet,

Splits into elements, refracts and reflects,

Returns as a sheen of royal colours: purple, blue, forest green.

—

But for a bird-of-paradise — the riflebird—black is a game played with light

Its feathers are a labyrinth.

Light loses its way among the turns.

At the edge of escape, takes the wrong direction

And wanders back, to be trapped within voids.