On photographs by Leila Jeffreys
As if, surely,

they recognise

her joy in them,
wear it welcomingly

on their own gaze,

they create, with her,
a mutual stillness.

Then her finger

moves.
Some carry stories,

cryptically

hidden but present,
of dispossession

from empires of

fruited green,
from wide-armed

darknesses hung with

seed cones – brought down,
brought down fast,

to create miles of

moneyed space.
Let each gaze speak.

Where there is gentleness

let gentleness speak,
or feisty idiosyncrasy

or curiosity

or spry charm.
Even as the studio light

plants a white moon

in each eye
these cockatoos reveal

their essential selves,

enter, inhabit 
an out-of-time poise,

everything stripped back

to wonder.
Have so many losses

in our overlapping worlds

wrought a new intimacy –
with each bird offering

freely, a knowledge

beyond our own?
Each portrait gives

a side or three-quarter view,

the single mandalic eye,
brownish black,

a pool of awareness,

lucid and deep.
The Red-tailed females

have particles of gold leaf

strewn across
breast, face feathers,

their counterpart flaunts

a mirage-tincture
of turquoise ready to

shift, to further subvert

varnished black.
On the Yellow-tailed,

near-gold cups the edge

of each scalloped feather,
forms traceries

on the recumbent wings,

glows from cheek-puffs.
Their given names are

Nora, Melba, Rosie

and Pete, his crest and head
a furore of feathers,

that centred eye

all the more steadfast. 
Akalla is the Glossy black,

recently ill,

still gathered into herself
but wearing a humble pride,

her measure of gold

dusted around her throat.
And what of Kirra,

a Carnaby’s black cockatoo,

the species most under threat:
deliciously, delicately

beautiful in plumage

and in her mien,
crossing a line somewhere

to share in our nature,

allow us to share in hers.
From the photographer

with her spellbound patience

no smile-provoking jokes –
though with cockatoos

themselves, the risk

is always there.
The miniature studio,

world within world,

a bough its only prop,
is an open cage of light,

this imaging

an act of tending.
If you wait long enough

you can begin to see,

even to feel
the spirit of these birds,

their verve, resilience,

their wild, raw joy,
to long for their voices,

raucous and vivacious,

as with silent composure 
they look towards us, through

the eyes of their photographer –

memorialist, celebrant, lover.

See leilajeffreys.com, / ‘Biloela Wild Cockatoos, exhibited 2012’