POETRY PEEK: John Mateer

The Cockatoo

Others might have expected conversation. We didn't.
Standing with a Malaysian-Chinese man outside his furniture store
on Sydney Road, Brunswick, we have no need to talk.
The Lebanese bloke on his silver bicycle, taking a break from the kebab shop,
glides past us. We don't notice. We don't look up
from the sulphur-crested cockatoo unsteadily perched on the back of a chair.
We are waiting for him to hold forth on the subject of AUSTRALIA.