a cento
where crimson rosellas swerve sideways
their noise etched in freeze-framed air
unwitnessed silence was a falling amber leaf
with its undertalk of shimmerings and insect wings
drawing attention, like children
electric, shaken, utterly still
neither of us seeing how it had been flowering, drawing lightness to it
shaping and reshaping sideways through winter sun’s white light –
lucky, then, that our air-dropped swallows did
you hear it, or have heard it, waiting here