Big Bridge #9

Poets of Australia

 

Mike Ladd

Yellow

A New Holland Honey-eater flits through the hibiscus
(flashes of 600 nano-metres.)
This colour hovers between stop and go,
between happiness and bad press.
Bilirubin enters the blood stream and John Wayne
says “Ya Yella!”
But my Sikh taxi driver explains
yellow for him is bravery –
emergency workers prise open the wreck
and sunflowers turn to face their name.



Mike Ladd is currently producer and presenter of the ABC Radio National poetry program PoeticA. His most recent books are Close to Home, published by Five Islands Press, and Rooms and Sequences from Salt Publishing.

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