Learning to Sing: A Bird’s-eye View
by Stuart Barnes
‘Eyes down, [Surname]. Now! We
don’t daydream here.’ Sir’s aim
was smooth – his cane swooped to
my pope’s nose. Slight in build,
I spun like that gold, good
-soled superhero. Men
taunted me – ‘Scarecrow!’ Men
broke claws on my ‘Je suis.’
Corridors thundered ‘Good
man!’ Hundreds of the same
haircut quick-marched. Hook-billed
lecterns beat bronze wings to
Reverend’s arm-flings. Two
girls and I – Oiseau Men –
jammed outside a new build.
On TV, a pewee
outwitted hall of fame
blue jays. The broad green hood
of the playground’s greenwood
tree raised the songs of two
male robins – my queer shame
roosted à la Tromen.
Fledged, I tried my bright ‘Whee.’
Flew in the teeth of ‘Build
a thicker skin!’ Love – billed
first, always. Hollywood
clipped Errol Flynn; Les Nuits
Fauves allopreened me. Too
out-left for echomen,
I was left out. Became
fed up with Sirs’ reclaim
-ing hawks. Watched falcons build
scrapes and lay where no men
could noose them. Heard a good
-luckbird’s ‘You will come to
the sea …’ Cried my bright ‘Oui!’
to the southerly wind’s ‘Suis
-moi!’ Peered at my boyhood’s aim,
eyes stilled, clear like albumen.
Note: Hollywood actor Errol Flynn and I attended the same school but in different decades;
to reclaim a hawk is to tame and train it; in Simpson & Day’s Birds of Australia the song of
the flame robin – a symbol of good luck – is described as ‘you will come, if you will, to the
sea’; Je suis is French for I am, Oiseau for bird, Oui for yes, Suis-moi for Follow me; Les
Nuits Fauves (Savage Nights) is a 1992 French film
Stuart Barnes is the author of Like to the Lark (Upswell Publishing, 2023), which won the Wesley Michel Wright Prize for Poetry, was shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal and highly commended in the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry, and of Glasshouses (UQP, 2016), which won the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize and was recognised by two other awards. Stuart is a member of Hell Herons, a spokenword + music collective whose album The Wreck Event includes an adaptation of his poem ‘Off-world Ghazal’, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Montreal International Poetry Prize.