While there are other words I’d prefer

            to break down into the sum 

                        of their syllabic parts,

            contraband, for example, or corollary,

for now this catch-cry for the age 

            will do, and so I begin, and when 

                        I have taken each sound apart 

            to find definitions

of climate, geology, human intervention 

            and anything else within

                        its musical componentry,

            I return, not to another name

for illicit goods, but to Licmetis,

            white relative of the sulphur-

                        crested cockatoo,

            once a full-time denizen

of the interior, now a resident

            in rowdy flocks that number

                        many thousands, driven

            to the margins, to the coast,

away from dying crops

            and a killing absence of water,

                        I refer to the Corella,

            the natural extension

of a word that means

            being resultant from something else,

                        and how corollary

            also applies to corally,

given a red tide of coral spawn

            on a reef, which in turn

                        brings four syllables

            from where they’ve been

hiding in plain sight

            in the Anthropocene.