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Special N.02 – Poets speak up to Adani

Black-Throated Finch

by B R Dionysius

 

By the pool, their fingernail-sized gullets undulate briskly

As if they are guilty celebrities scoffing a midnight treat,

Their black cravats panting with excitement. They can’t

Stay in this kitchen heat for long; fluent in the language

Of dehydration, a fast tipple or else they’re dumbstruck.

Their image burned into extinction’s cyclopean retina,

As if this fragile flock gazed into the sun directly, or they

Were a picnic of ants fried by a bully’s magnifying glass.

The dam water is a current running through their bodies;

It sets off the electricity of their flight, as one they scatter

To the air, like a handful of wedding rice. Their fall might

Weigh as much; in the billionaire’s thoughts he’s ripped

Out the earth’s coal-black throat; the box trees cut open

Like rich sediment. Their habitat halved like a seed cake.

Published: August 2022
B R Dionysius

was founding Director of the Queensland Poetry Festival. He has published over 500 poems in literary journals, anthologies, newspapers and online. His eighth poetry collection, Weranga was released in 2013. He teaches English at Ipswich Grammar School and lives in Riverhills, Brisbane.

An Australian and international
journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Plumwood Mountain Journal is created on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to elders past, present and future. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the lands this journal reaches.

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