Philip Hodgins: The Ibises

Some people say the plural is “ibis”
but my Dictionary for Writers and Editors
says it's got an “es” on the end
which is good enough for me,
and anyway that's how I always heard it said
back home at Katandra West.
Round there they were known as “the farmer's friend”.
A good-sized flock of them
would take a ton of insects and grubs
out of the paddock in an afternoon
and at the same time aerate the soil.
No wonder they're special.
Every farmer's son learning how to shoot
is told to stay right away from the ibis.
In Egypt it's their most sacred bird.
It eats crocodile eggs for breakfast,
washes them down with only the purest water
then spends the rest of the day
probing the mud for knowledge.
And the story goes
they're so fond of living in Egypt
that if they're taken out of there
the poor things pine to death.
I couldn't be too sure about that
but I remember one time years ago
a flock of ibises hundreds strong
landing all around me in a freshly watered paddock.
The first thing I knew about it
was when the big dappled shadow rushed over me;
and then the sound,
the deepest, longest breath I'd ever heard.
As soon as each one touched down
they were straight into it,
pointedly investigating the wet pasture,
turning over interesting clues.

Real cloak-and-dagger stuff I thought.
It was a pointer to anyone there
the way that some were black
some were white
while all of them were black-and-white
and none seemed to notice.
The ibises were too busy
dipping into the language of memory
and the memory of language.
They had bodies the shape of caraway seeds
and long black bills that curved like scythes.
Suddenly they all took off.
It was probably me.
They swung round twice
as if looking for a way out
then flew directly across to Ned Wilkie's place,
leaving one last image
of a crooked smudgy line over the far trees.
I stood there thinking about it.
It wasn't much.
But it was better than a slap in the guts
with a dead fish.

Written late 1980s, published in Animal Warmth. In both tone and structure a perfect example of how to write a discursive poem. The final sentence may seem to be overdoing the Australian laconic, but I read it as an indirect reference to the leukemia informing all of Hodgins's poetry.