The ringbarked gum on the flat below
Is burdened with blossoms of living snow;
Bare as a bone
It stood alone,
Flowerless, till five minutes ago.
The breeze that was all the day retelling
The news that the first cuckoo was spelling
Carefully over
The paddocks of clover
Is suddenly rent with a raucous yelling.
The purring river forgets to purr,
The rushes lash and the reedbeds stir,
The mood of the flat
Is like that of a cat
Suddenly roughed the wrong way of its fur.
It must be important, the way they shout;
It may be a secret, though this I doubt.
Will deafness fall
On one and all?
What are the cockatoos screaming about?
Then suddenly, as at the word of "go,"
Over the rise they flap and flow.
Slip from the branches
Like avalanches
Of some impossible summer snow.
First published in The Bulletin, 5 October 1955
