Little Friarbird
Cassandra O’Loughlin (University of Newcastle, Australia)
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Until at last May dumps the gumnut’s parasols
to wither on the grass, your discordant chatter
and song are so much a part of the summer heat
and cloudburst soundscape you are no longer noticed,
as if you are vapour mounting the still-warm earth,
the scent of nuts and nectar and full-bloomed brollies
still in you, and the chest that lifts your sound, a shoal
of yellow-scaled fish overlapping in the light.
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Cassandra O’Loughlin is a BA (1st Class Hons) graduate from the University of Newcastle, Australia. She is a recipient of the University and Faculty medals. Ecocriticism and Ecopoetics are the focus of her PhD thesis. Her poems appear in various books and in journals published in Australia, the USA and the UK. She has been awarded a highly commended in the 2012 Eric Rolls Prize for a personal essay.
