Know. Reflection and observation is criticism you know. The
peacock
Joy. With its shuffling and repetitive joy. We overhear, we
Conversation. Make a construction on the wren’s conversation
Whistling is
Poetics. A kind of poetics. The wren rhymes, gives rhetoric
Flight. Gentle flight. Gesture. Listening is a self-protective
gesture
Survival. Interpretation a matter of survival. One person’s
home is
Metaphor. Another’s metaphor. The butcher-bird is a rhyming-
bird
that steals another’s expressions and metre: and from them
wrings
Blood. A little extra blood. Form is also home, but
Yours. Not yours. The kestrel favours first person, and the
Psalm. Future tense: telling its story in a melodramatic psalm
The swamp pheasant writes in rhetorical colour, makes a
gesture
Contrived. And a reading that may not have been contrived
Guard. Thornbills making leaf sounds catch hawks off-guard
A
black-shouldered kite can burn through paper with a look