Globe spanning Godwits, flying
north to Alaska, dodge sea
squalls. While Golden-
winged warblers, a day
away, take the route
round, miss the
tornado.

Heard
in infrasound.

Pandemics
are not about weather,
though ‘birds of dissent’ abandon
nesting boxes, leave town,
seek unnoticed addresses,
having heard, in message
patterns, what other
ears are deaf to.

Listen carefully.

Now dismissed, amid jeers
from peers of a feather, ‘birds
of dissent’ descend from perches:
fringes of the mass, discredited
doctors, those disowned by daughters – locked
out, surprised invisible, taught to question
themselves targets side stepping
they stand.

Observe and respond.
Change course.

**

Gabrielle Higgins, founder of Mud brick poet, is a bookbinder and poet, living on Wurundjeri Country in the Yarra Valley. Her poetry publications include Cordite, Contemporary Australian Feminist Poetry, Paper Wasp and Plumwood Mountain. Her poem was highly commended in the Philip Bacon Ekphrastic Poetry Prize 2016.

P76 issue 9: Poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora/ odyssey: On-line Edition. Table of Contents