"Seasonal Flocking"
Last week outside my window
the tree grew red rosellas,
berry-bright fruits, the young ones
brocaded with juvenile green.
I said, the autumn's ending.
They have come out of the mountains
and the snowcloud shadows.
This week, on the road to town,
in the red-hung hawthorns,
eleven of the Twelve Apostles,
eight black cockatoos, their tails
fanned to show yellow panes,
uncounted magpies and currawongs
greasily fat from the dump and the butcher's throwouts --
that breeding-ground of maggots.
All of them flocked together,
crying aloud, knowing
the end of autumn.
Sharp-edged welcome-swallows
gathered and circled upwards.
Frost soon, and the last warmth passes.
Seed-stems rot on wet grasses.
At the end of autumn
I too -- I want you near me,
all you who scatter
into far places or are hidden under
summer-forgotten gravestones.
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Judith Wright was an activist for the Aborginal and therefore, I think this poem can be interpreted in two ways, and hence ambiguous.
Her mother passed away and the last stanza sort of reflects it, but do you have any ideas of what "summer-forgotten gravestones" could mean?
The scenario is quite stationary, but yet everything seems to be moving and alive and changing. Like shift in time between stanza 1 and 2.
I was wondering if "eleven of the Twelve Apostles" could represent something or have an under-surface meaning- could be related to Aboriginal? or the symbol related to christianity? Numbers 11 and 8 might as well represent something but 12 represents completion?
I suppose black cockatoos could either represent the white men or the Aboriginal themselves. What do you think?? And butcher could represent the white men, whereas magpies and currawongs represent the Aboriginal race? Or otherwise, it could be the other way round.
All seasons mentioned except for spring.