New Year, NSW

Carole Bromley

On my Christmas tree a roo
sporting a Santa hat,
two carved wooden birds,
kuckaburra and cockatoo.

I bought them in Braidwood
joked with the shopkeeper
Christmas isn’t Christmas
without a kangaroo.

At Mollymook, black cockatoos
in the rustling eucalypts,
in Ulladulla magpies and sandpipers
swooped at our heads.

At night only the ocean
washing the white sand,
a single kuckaburra laughing
on a corrugated roof.

Carole Bromley is a York-based poet with three collections from Smith/Doorstop. Winner of a number of prizes, including the Bridport and the Poetry Society’s 2019 Hamish Canham Award. Her most recent publication is a pamphlet, 
Sodium 136 (Calder Valley Poetry).