This week’s Poet’s Corner contributions from Bev Hedgman look at sounds of the Adelaide Hills, in slightly different ways.

Cockatoo

Raucous screeching squawking
Yellow crest upraised
Alerting other dwellers
Of the danger
In their midst.
I sat beside the stream
Listening
As the noise came, unabated.
Investigation beckoned:
What was causing such distress?

I walked amidst the trees
Amid continual cacophony,
Not a threat, but as I watched,
A small opossum ran
Along the branch, watched
By the cockatoo.

The opossum made his escape
From the screeching cockatoo
Who continued his
Raucous indignation,
Unabated.

Silence

Can you hear the silence
Drifting round your ears?
If you listen closely,
A sound is always there.

Soft sound of rain
A gentle breeze
Birds that sing
Rustle of leaves
Groaning trees
A creek that tumbles over rocks,
There’s no such thing as silence,
Just listen, a sound is always there.

Bev Hedgman, originally from New Zealand, lives in the Adelaide Hills. There she enjoys walking with dog Harry and is a member of Hill Poets, whose second anthology Through the Tunnel was reviewed in InDaily. She also runs a writing group at the Norton Summit Community Centre, and has enjoyed poetry over a lifetime, being introduced to it by one of those “special teachers”.

Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. A poetry book will be awarded to each contributor.