Peter and I have just returned from Troubridge Island.
It's just one of those magical places that demands your connection.
It's really just a tiny patch of scrub on an endlessly respiring body of sand,
but it is home to thousands of birds.
Each night they fill the darkness with ass like braying, growls and screams
and I couldn't help but think of the Musicians of Brenham.
Every unoccupied hideaway is enthusiastically sourced and claimed,
so that to wander barefooted and silently, it was very easy to be privy to their most
intimate rituals.
Sitting very still at night, illuminated by a full moon and stripped of colour, the dances, shuffling, darting, strutting,
of penguins and rails in particular, is a joyful and humbling experience, to
come to the realisation that despite our presumed importance and superiority,
these ancient fellow creatures have just gone about their business successfully
without the need to get bigger and better and advertise that fact to the world.
I love this line from Judith Wright in her poem BIRDS
"whatever the bird is, is perfect in the bird.''
Lyn Wood
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