Bird Song Poem by David Brooks

There’s a species of
grey and white pigeon
in Glebe, New South Wales,
that lies on its back in the roadway
while the traffic passes over it.

The soft feathers
of its breast and
wing-tips
riffle in the slip-stream
of buses and the
four-wheel drives some like to call
‘Balmain Bulldozers’.

The traffic is loud
and hard to listen through.
The delicate beaks
and fragile
skull-bones, the
tiny, intricate feet
under the
dark
rubber tyres
make sounds that
nobody can ever hear.