Third Place
- The Starlings
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- In maple tree and strawberry tree, whiteywood, macrocarpa
- and pine, we found them out. In the thicket of the pittosporum
- hedge, in eucalyptus and camellia, japonica and rhododendron,
- in all that wide, wild acre we were poacher and gamekeeper,
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- noting the birds' vanishings and reappearances, each new nest
- bristling in the branches. The thrush's, rough grasses outside,
- and inside smooth mud; in the plumtree a blackbird's,
- with its speckled, green egg; thrown together in haste,
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- the sparrows' anyhow slums, that in late spring gales
- came calamitously to earth; and once a miracle,
- a warbler's delicate pouch stitched with lichen, quills
- of the softest down, suspended by a thread. Still,
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- it's the starlings I remember, the pair that returned to that gap
- above the purple hydrangeas, between weatherboard and eve.
- The same birds, we thought, but how long does a starling live?
- For twenty years they came and went, flit and pause and up
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- into that hidden place, on bird business. Only the starlings
- chose our home for theirs. The vastness and splendour
- of their piecemeal activity, their lives' long labour,
- was revealed at last; we saw, in the murk of the ceiling,
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- that whole cavernous space filled, stuffed like a haybarn,
- all their store piled high like gold. Let the starlings warn
- of love's propensity: never knowing when to leave off,
- it builds and builds and builds, and enough is never enough.
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- Tim Upperton
- Palmerston North
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