{"id":4655,"date":"2015-09-26T22:41:56","date_gmt":"2015-09-26T22:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/?p=4655"},"modified":"2015-09-26T22:47:09","modified_gmt":"2015-09-26T22:47:09","slug":"the-australian-ibis-sister-to-the-sacred-ibis-a-poem-by-ian-irvine-hobson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/the-australian-ibis-sister-to-the-sacred-ibis-a-poem-by-ian-irvine-hobson\/","title":{"rendered":"The Australian Ibis (Sister to the Sacred Ibis) A Poem by Ian Irvine Hobson"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\n 
\n\"Australain<\/a>
\n 
\nI – The Evening Dinner
\n 
\nAn Australian ibis – sister to Thoth’s sacred ibis
\n(now extinct in Egypt) – is nesting near the dam
\nat the bottom of our land. She hatched three chicks
\nbut only two survive. It’s swampy down there,
\ndue to the summer of inundations – we imagine she
\nfeeds her young on yabbies, frogs and large insects.
\n 
\nMaybe there are two birds – she seems larger in the
\nevenings. My son believes they change parental shifts
\nat dawn and dusk. I like to imagine they write in their
\ndown-time: poems, plays, essays, novels … Their black
\nbills hint at great things: beyond wading the shallows,
\nfeeding snails to their young and antiseptic preening.
\n 
\nII – Factoid
\n 
\nIbises (scribes) are ‘pests’ in today’s new Australia
\nof fast money, climate change denial and government
\nsanctioned human rights abuses. In eastern seaboard
\ncities, colonies of birds – escapees from inland drought –
\nclamour for pastries and fish-food in parks beside
\nsuburban lakes. They number in the thousands.
\n 
\nIII – The Community of Scribes
\n 
\nAt dusk last night I tried to observe the change
\nof shift – I crept slowly, noiselessly to a spot behind
\na large gum-tree and waited. The ibis was undisturbed
\n– she\/he waded in the shallows concentrating, no doubt,
\non some doomed creature slithering about in the rich
\nspring mud. The chicks, hopefully, safe in their nest.
\n 
\nTime stood still – we could have been in ancient
\nEgypt, perhaps on a minor tributary of the Nile –
\npoised between night and day, sunset and moon-
\nglow … white-black bird with amazing concentration!
\nSuch a domestic scene: a parent sourcing the evening
\nmeal. And then I heard it: a disturbance in the air, a
\n 
\ncommunal flapping of wings, above me, above the tree-line –
\nhow many birds? They circled in a gigantic V, necks out-
\nstretched, powerful unhurried wing flaps – lumbering
\norganic cargo planes – and the moon as their back-
\ndrop. Until one of them descended, smoothly – the
\npredicted mate? – before executing a deft water landing.
\n 
\nAs one bird arrived the other departed – they rubbed bills
\nin the handover. Soon enough she (or he) was soaring
\nbeneath the papyrus heavens – in formation with cadres
\nfrom some secret avian writers\u2019 group. Free, by night
\nto pursue the challenges of scribing (and interpreting)
\nthe hieroglyphic enigmas of past, present and future.
\n 
\nTheir young, with luck, will soon be airborne –
\nfor a global winter approaches, and
\nthe sons and daughters of Thoth and
\nSesheta are all that stands between
\nhumanity and brutal, self-created chaos.<\/strong>
\n 
\nImage: \u2018Thoth as Ibis\u2019, by the author, 2015.<\/em>
\n 
\n 
\n\"Ian<\/a>
\n 
\nAbout the Author
\n 
\nIan Irvine (Hobson) is an Australian-based poet\/lyricist, fiction writer and non-fiction writer. His work has featured in publications as diverse as Humanitas<\/em> (USA), The Antigonish Review<\/em> (Canada), Tears in the Fence <\/em>(UK), Linq <\/em>(Australia) and Takahe (NZ)<\/em>, among many others. His work has also appeared in two Australian national poetry anthologies: Best Australian Poems 2005 <\/em>(Black Ink Books) and Agenda: \u2018Australian Edition\u2019, 2005<\/em>. He is the author of three books and co-editor of a number of literary journals \u2013 Scintillae 2012<\/em>, The Animist ezine <\/em>(7 editions, 1998-2001) and Painted Words <\/em>(10 editions 2005-2014). He coordinates the Professional Writing and Editing program at Bendigo Kangan Institute (Bendigo & Melbourne, Australia) and has taught in the same program at Victoria University, St. Albans, Melbourne. He has also taught history and social theory at La Trobe University (Bendigo, Australia) and holds a PhD for his work on creative, normative and dysfunctional forms of morbid ennui. Web site: http:\/\/www.authorsden.com\/ianirvine<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nwww.facebook.com\/PoetryLifeTimes<\/a>
\nwww.facebook.com\/Artvilla.com<\/a>
\n robin@artvilla.com<\/a>
\neditor@artvilla.com<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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      I – The Evening Dinner   An Australian ibis – sister to Thoth’s sacred ibis (now extinct in Egypt) – is nesting near the dam at the bottom of our land. She hatched three chicks but only two survive. It’s swampy down there, due to the summer of inundations – we imagine … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,43],"tags":[643,198,636,644,18,136,3,645],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4655"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4655"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4660,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4655\/revisions\/4660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}