Judith Wright: Pelicans

Funnel-web spider, snake and octopus,
pitcher-plant and vampire-bat and shark –
these are cold water on an easy faith.
Look at them, but don't linger.
If we stare too long, something looks back at us;
something gazes through from underneath;
something crooks a very dreadful finger
down there in an unforgotten dark.

Turn away then, and look up at the sky.
There sails that old clever Noah's Ark,
the well-turned, well-carved pelican
with his wise comic eye;
he turns and wheels down, kind as an ambulance-driver,
to join his fleet. Pelicans rock together,
solemn as clowns in white on a circus river,
meaning: this world holds every sort of weather.


Judith Wright (1915-2000) wrote an entire book of bird poems—or more correctly, someone assembled a book of poems about birds she'd written. Wright had a tendency to make pronouncements rather than poetry (e.g. that last line), which only highlights how misguided some of her pronouncements are: snake, octopus and pitcher-plant can be not only harmless but beautiful; and, more significantly, Wright must have been unaware of how brutally murderous pelican siblings are to each other. But there's some nice observation here. And a poem that begins "Funnel-web spider" has clutched the reader in its claws right from the start.