Eastern Whip Bird
Magdalena Ball
Loss can be registered in language In birdsong, in scent buckwheat, barley, schmaltz. Nothing is lost, not even the moment shattered into light pulses, entangled in the mother tongue, in the morning leaves a taste on the lips, sharp breaks through like the crack of a whip reminds you that time is a construct you write every minute with breath. You think you’re reaching back for something missing, only to find it held, in the pelvis, the shoulder girdle whispered from parent to child long after that motherly voice, like a caress, dispersed flowing through the world as atoms, electrons, a charge carrier. It’s okay to let her go, begin anytime. She’s here.
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The story behind the poem:
The forest where I live is full of birdsong, none more prevalent than the distinctive whip-crack of the Easter Whipbird. I wrote the poem not long after the death of my mother and was grieving but also surrounded and even held by the beauty of the forest, which seemed to not be separate from her. Our relationship has continued to develop after death, one-way perhaps, but transformed rather than destroyed. We know from The Law of Conservation of Energy that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed from one form to another, and I felt that viscerally. My mother had changed form, but remained present, not just in memory, but also in my DNA, and as atoms, entangled with the birds that were singing and with everything I was experiencing, just for that moment, where time and death seemed illusory. The consolation of quantum physics may be odd, but I have returned to that space, and every time, she is there.
First published in The Density of Compact Bone (Ginninderra Press, 2021)
