Home
The moon knocks on my breastbone, asks to come in. Such quiet – I fall into it, sounds fall into it like homecoming – raven calls; the pardalote chicks’ chorus of cries at each visit from their parents and the thready monotone of four or five repeated notes in the interim; the approaching and retreating digdigdigdig of a helicopter fanning the night’s rain off fruit in the cherry orchard along the road; wattlebirds feeding in the flowering pōhutukawa, their voices guttural above the drone of bees; the sound of a tractor changing gears as it climbs the hill outside the gate. Raven parents park a youngster at the top of a windbreak tree near the house. From there the fledgling calls belligerently, broadcasting its demand for food with the regularity of a beacon. Some days it moves down to the edge of the forest, but mostly it’s nearby. Maybe t