One more feather and I'll fly
Cocky Bennett was a sulphur-crested Cockatoo who lived to the ripe old age of 119 years. After a life of seafaring he came to live at the Seabreeze Hotel at Tom Ugly’s Point, Sydney – where he died in May 1916. The bird had been featherless for much of its life due to suspected Psittacine disease. Cocky was stuffed by taxidermists ‘Tost & Rohu’ and now resides with the Kogarah Historical Society.
A sentence of one hundred and nineteen years
reveals a portrait of the bird as a pirate.
A claw-beaked sailor of dark brews and beers,
purveyor of bawdy discourse, bar-room brawler.
He circumnavigates the wiry longitudes of his cage,
pale and puckered, scant feathers whorl
and stub pink cockatoo skin as if the cook
had left mid-pluck. The drinkers gather,
they offer profanities as plumage and gawk
at his status as living kitsch, ‘One at a time,
gentlemen, please! Let me think!’
As a centenarian, Cocky’s earned his shrine
in the cabinet of quirk and circumstance.
Now he’s dead they’ve glassed him in.
One hundred and nineteen years. A sentence
twice caged – in life and in death,
tethering freedom in case a bird might fly,
or explore a feather’s breadth.
Reviews of Kristin Hannaford's collection Curio
Hamish Danks Brown, reviewing Curio in Rochford Street Review
Mary Cresswell, reviewing Curio in Plumwood Mountain, Vol 2 No 1, Feb 2015.
Anne Elvey, reviewing Curio along with Julie Maclean’s When I saw Jimi and Kiss of the Viking in Cordite, 5th February 2015.
Poetry selection from 'Curio'
Portrait
Assisted Passage
Skulduggery
More poems by Kristin Hannaford
Curlew
Unwinding
Driftwood
Lee side, On board the Triton
Miscellaneous
Kristin Hannaford, launching Paul Summer's collection
primitive cartography, Rockhampton, August 23rd, 2013.