Produced and broadcast by ABC Radio National, 2011
project producer: Gretchen Miller
reading: Rebecca Massey
sounds: Russell Stapleton
poem: indigo eli
Dear Madame,
for the budgie known as Madame Flap Jacket
I collected your white feathers with egg-shell honoured fingers
into a little, lined, brown paper bag
feathers ruffled from empty patches
in the silk-white snowflake-breath skin that dulls
the scrawny shape within
and I wonder what you would look like plucked…
not …plucked
just instantly naked… or beak-less.
Under those facial feathers you fan to leave welcome patch
for a finger or nose to nuzzle
curiosity finds the incongruous seam where beak seems detachable
and though I would never
pluck or de-beak you,
I’ll put your feathery whiskers in special packages
in the cupboard now fixed in my bedroom fireplace;
your spirit a furnace for mine.
