Witness by Colleen Duncan

(runner-up Escape ARTfest 2010, Milton-Ulladulla_

I watch crows pick through garbage
from Saturday night in a wind
bitten with rain they squabble
over cold chips and kebabs
chiacking like schoolboys
flapping wet wings ruffling feathers
while one keenly fixes me a gaze
of stone

down Bulli Pass a dark lord skims
the air beside my window then
turns looks flies off
a white golf ball snapped
in its beak like a prize

At Wollongong
with a circling wind scouring
my brain a bird balances
his darkness and light
on a wire and catches my eye as
a train slides in and
I make my escape

As carriages rattle through Dapto
a crow on a post watches my face
and picks over my thoughts for
something to remember me by
then is caught by a wind
that flaps it away to the east
like a burnt scrap of paper

Now all that I’m left is this face
in the glass going home