The Ibises

Sam Morley

Black hoopingly tip toe

hopping our concrete benches

shifty in our silver chip

packets, making static

under a rusty weathervane.

We see no happiness here

whatever is sustenance

only fuels their careful parsing

of threads and peels and cores.

In tatters, the detritus

of our children is lifted up

then put down, seeing

the world divided along one

rule of sunshine or shadow.

Soon the others come as one

a loping mind of grey dirt

claw spaced and pacing

asking for all that we’ve left.

These are the elders come.

This is a dinosaur with a bent cane

on sludge. Its best thought

out argument is calibrated

to the sun’s dip and earth tilt.

Their days end with nothing

a black hook of hope

turning and turning over

our every windswept thing

slow-stepping on desire paths

tossing up what we’ve done

and what we’ve wasted.

SAM MORLEY has been published in various journals and has been shortlisted in the Montreal International Poetry Prize. He is the 2022 recipient of the Tina Kane Emergent Writer Award at the Mildura Writers Festival. His collections include Earshot (Puncher & Wattmann) and You Do You out now through Upswell.