In my dream there wasn’t a magpie
warbling caroling arguing garbling
back and forth back and forth
with another about resources
There wasn’t a lorikeet,
shrieking competing wreaking clichéd
havoc in the last remaining
clichéd freaking shivering tuart trees
There wasn’t a raven
hahring and harking electric on the lines,
calling conversing drak, black, smack,
crack on the concrete lawns
In my dream there weren’t sixteen
lightly birded hedged picketed lines
There was only the edge of everything
The silicon lip of the precipice and you
on it
with your eyes
like the ice that’s about to melt,
and in your grip
a broken bottle, its razor neck
like a talon or a hooked beak,
bald as a silver dollar
or a Jolly Roger, you
on it
with your eyes
warding off my tooth and clichéd
nail and greedy breathing
