We’re in the picture book spread

of a stranger’s garden on the mountain,

about to listen to my friend perform

her poetry, which has a lot to say

about birds and ghosts. She believes birds

are marionetted by loved ones

we used to know, paying us a visit

from wherever’s next. Every time

she has a fleeting interaction with a bird,

she puts two and two together

and knows in her bones who is here

to share a message. I think the message

itself is often harder to divine

without a finely tuned intuition.

At the break, my friends rag on me

for calling a crow a boring bird but I meant

to say, Black is a boring colour for a bird.

Now my friend who writes bird poems

but refuses to call herself a poet

is speaking over a chorus of her friends

and family like tipsy hecklers.

She could single them out by their trills,

oddly specific as fingerprints

or by a glance at their primary-coloured

plumage, plush as pashmina

brushed against your cheek in Jaipur.

As she speaks, I watch a monarch

butterfly pursuing a noisy miner

through September mountain air

and I wonder, who is the butterfly

in this painted scene? Who is the noisy miner

being chased? And what is the pursuit

trying to tell me? But I couldn’t begin

to make sense of it for you now.

You’ll have to forgive me. I’m too busy

listening to someone else’s poem.