Foam flecks of cockatoos
cascade down crest of verge –
foraging, they are,
though what they scissor up
in snipping beaks,
eludes me.
~
Minute mark
from charcoal stick –
fixed calm in adept hand
defines dark-sight,

drills dot so firm-precise
that Narina's* eye startles out –
and yet, what depth,

what awe
that particle in ghost-white clay,
uncoils -

so does both Artist
and artisan
craft cockatoo, genus - Cacatuidae*.
~
Clever fella, that Namatjira*,
Gubba*-dabbled to raise ghost gums,
then he, in time, himself
was sung*
from this canvas unto a larger one,
for the crime of oblivion*.
~
Who can capture,
who encrypt cockatoo roving down
an undistinguished knoll.
~ 
What mortal hand or eye
                                                     print
                                                     immortal soul?

 
* Yurumu, the Eagle-man, took revenge on Kilpuruna for cheating on him with his wife, Narina. Kilpuruna turned into a Blanket Lizard, Narina turned into a Sulphur-crested (White) Cockatoo.

*A cockatoo is a parrot that is any of the 21 species belonging to the bird family Cacatuidae, the only family in the superfamily Cacatuoidea.

*Albert Namatjira is one of Australia's great artists, and perhaps the best known Aboriginal painter. His western style landscapes – different to traditional Aboriginal art, made him famous.

*Gubba – Aboriginal slang for white people.

* Albert Namatjira believed that he had the bone pointed at him and was therefore "sung" to death.

*Namatjira brought alcohol onto the Aboriginal reservation where he was forced to live. His alcohol was taken and consumed and a woman killed following drunkenness in a kind of quid pro quo reaction.