New Poetry by Erina Booker

Sketch

I’m going to draw this poem for you

so you can see what I can see:

in this small stratosphere so much

is silhouetted starkly against a plain backdrop

I’m taking a large square sheet of white drawing paper

and at the top I’m drawing a butterfly with flapping wings,

strange to see one so high, tissue wings

fighting to stay in shape against the wind

from the right is a knife-edged swoop of swallow

with forked tail in iconic shape

I’ll colour its wings Prussian Blue

and add a glaze of glimmer

a ladle of Terracotta on its upper breast

in the background, upper left,

I’ll draw a suggestion of the cluster

of gulls and ibises

hanging handkerchief-hemmed

errant stragglers, drifting, chilling

and then the showpiece, new to me,

the friendly currawong on a glass pane

of the balcony

Ivory Black with flashes of Chinese White

on tail and edges of wings

eye of Deep Cadmium

soft Silver Grey beak with predatory hook

I could use a 2B pencil for this, dark and fine

better than the soft and smudgy 4B’s

de rigueur for writing music

So! I’m ready to go

when he drops kamikaze

against the background void

simply falls, free-falls

into the blank air

legs straight

wings clasped to sides

as he was before,

dropping so fast I don’t see

his wings open

I only see this performer’s

fierce prowess of DNA – falling with flair

into greedy gravity,

confident that he will fling open

his safety-net wings

like black matador’s capes

diverting a trajectory of fated death

How could my cartoon of a stick-figure-black-bird

straight legs hanging like a child’s drawing

convey the glorious potency of skill

the savage clasp on life

against this pallid background

of unremarkable Sky Blue?

 

- © Erina Booker 2021

Erina Booker is a Sydney-based poet. She has published eight collections of her work, and contributes to journals, internationally, in Australia, and online. She enjoys giving recitals, seminars, and judging competitions. Erina has a Major in Literature within her Bachelor of Arts degree, and a Postgraduate degree in Counselling. Her interests are extensive and never-ending.