The Unseeing of a House Sparrow and Other Poems
by Ion Corcos
The Unseeing of a House Sparrow
The dialogue has stopped. We sit on a bench. Light rain,
a cat climbing a short brick wall. Concise.
Our backs rest on splintered wood, confusion, uncertainty;
a decision to be broken. Where we go from here
is rooted; a parent always precedes the journey –
they, I, am always here, first. The sunlight may collapse,
but it will reappear, sprout weeds in lawns,
undampen earth; it is unfaltering. What then
is loneliness, if not an unseeing of a sparrow,
the fall of petals from a magnolia, or washing a dirty bucket
in a stream of snowmelt. We wait for the walnut tree to leaf,
and unleaf. That cold day,
on the first of June: wind, ice on the mountains, the chill
of laundry hanging, censorship. To restore:
under a worn footbridge a swift dips its beak into a creek,
tilts its head back. Unawkward.
On a Morning Walk to a Man-Made Dam
It was a walk we intended to take for weeks now, snow
on the mountaintops, restless skies, obdurate stones. Snails crossing
the road after rain, stranded. An avowal. Withered petals,
and the irredeemable lightness of wing fossils – sparse,
crushed, roiled. No history, none that I can recognise, no dogmatism.
A cuckoo. I search for where this bird roosts;
no rustling: it does not show itself. Not in the copse
some way across the pastures, trees standing in a cluster
on the lower slopes, or in the valley
where another cuckoo reiterates in the difficult sun.
We amble down the hill, tamed in the somewhat-wilderness,
understanding, yet still enthralled
by the cuckoos, both, as they impart, fainter, then cease,
until we come to a paddock. Linger. The birds,
even though silent, unforgotten. Missing.
A horse pulls a plough back-and-forth, turning the soil, iridescent,
wet, in the warmth; one man steers the animal, as a man and woman sit,
eat and drink at the gate. It is not a large field,
the earth broken up to receive seed, to unburden hunger.
On the bend, plots of soil attached to a home:
butterhead lettuce, spring onions, entwined tomato vines,
stout pumpkins. White birch, swallows slipping through brambles,
magpies picking at moss on rough roofs.
The stones are getting smaller, the road sealed ahead;
it is only a matter of time before wood, dead stumps,
are named, and we will be, once more, further removed
from the lightness of unknowing. Undisturbed. A Babylonian
weeping willow, upright forget-me-nots, juniper,
a mistle thrush sweeping over a meadow. In a dam, farmed carp,
unseen frogs, portents.
No abandon, no confession. The path, brittle, collapses into itself:
the unidealised. A truck scrapes against a blackthorn hedge.
Butterflies & Love
I am in Zakynthos,
where my grandfather, Dimitrios, who I never met, was from.
Chicks on the lawn scurry after a hen, then us.
They are more than animal.
I fall in love with them.
I am a sparrow, a goat under the shade of a tamarisk tree,
a Greek island where turtles live, and seals pass by.
There is more than enough here.
I am more than who I think I am; an old Greek will always serve coffee
with a glass of water.
Caterpillars turn into butterflies, but I believe butterflies
come from love; birds are spirits to remind me.
I have figs and almonds in my bag.
My mum is still alive.
I remember when I first found out that the word logic
comes from the Greek word logos: to speak.
It does not mean to be rigid, and soulless.
Ion Corcos was born in Sydney, Australia in 1969. He has been published in Cordite, Meanjin, Wild Court, The Sunlight Press, and other journals. Ion is a nature lover and a supporter of animal rights. He is the author of A Spoon of Honey (Flutter Press, 2018).