LAPWINGS AND KITE STRINGS
- Feb 14
- 2 min read
By Melanie Weckert
Connecting genocidal colonialism in two continents.
I see a bright thread floating
from cloud to watchful bird,
catching at feathers of grey and white,
slipping through claws of razor-sharp,
threading the water of the river to caress a fish,
then soar to the top of Eagle Point Bluff.
A kiss for the boy who looks heaven in the eye
and sees for a moment an angel is there.
We wind around children at play
as unending games are ended
and aunties wail like lapwings
swooping in fury,
their unearthly cries, an elegy
for the smashed egg, the snatched
and broken chick, the nests trampled
into the ancient Gippsland dirt.
The Gunai survive. Laughter returns,
above, a kite flutters: black, yellow, red.
We wing our way to a new battleground
where ambulance sirens wail like flying shells
and Vanellus nests in crater debris.
The aunties swoop in ferocity
at the demented chorus of shrieking bombs,
the starving children: eyes sunken,
protruding ribs under fine kid leather.
Another kite fluttering white,
another child’s game cut short.
A kiss for the boy who looks heaven in the eye,
seeing for a moment an angel is there.
The lapwings assemble to screech
their elegy for the smashed egg,
the snatched and broken chicks,
as men tread nests into the ancient Gazan dirt.
Tonight, sleep won’t come, the wailing too loud.
Those shrunken bodies, tiny limbs,
incubators abandoned in ruined hospitals.
The flour massacre. The tent massacre.
The refugee camp massacre. Endless massacres.
What are we aunties supposed to do but wail
to see, in a background of fiery darkness,
a man cradle his baby’s blackened corpse?