Elegy for Platypus

Dusk on the dam is plenty.

There are Egrets,

Newer even than me to this place,

Their ancestors recent from Asia,

Came by following cows.

Now, their flocks strengthen by the minute,

Doing their evening rounds.

Round, round and round

Above they flap, more by the day

Descend for the night.

More and more from the south.

I counted forty-five, then sixty,

Then too many,

So many I think e-bird will doubt

My record.

But no doubt they abound.

One hundred, one-fifty,

Even one with a dangling leg

Flying,

Fearless.

And the bowerbirds!

Down from their mountain summer,

Now they have caught on in lower lands,

With their wheezes of machines,

Their Satin languages.

They have caught on in the Camphor trees

Which line the bank

Of this man-made lake.

The trees are Asian too,

Yes, and the lily pads and the rushes.

These days we could almost be in Thailand

If not for the birds of Gondwana

Who know a thing or two

To do with Asian fruit,

And they are thriving.

But what of our little guy?

Our little web-toed

Monotreme of the stream,

Our Platypus?

We used to see him here too.

Just last year he was here.

But this year I fear he is gone.

Oh, dear one,

Creature of another time,

I search your little lump of a bum

Before you dive,

Scattering the Camphor green

In your rippling wake.

But this year forsaken,

And the Camphor image is true in the lake.

It leers in painterly faces,

Like Monet or The Scream.

I have begun to fear for your life,

Oh little one,

Is it now too much like Asia,

Or god forbid too full of pesticide

For you to survive?

Is today just too intolerable

For an egg-hatched mammal of a duck's bill?

Yes, there is Egret and Bowerbird,

Kingfisher and Microbat too.

But I have sat 'til dark in waiting

For ripples to move this painting,

And still,

No you.