Live Encounters Poetry & Writing September 2025
Shrike-thrush, for Instance, poem by Mark Tredinnick.
Shrike-thrush, for Instance
For Meredith*
You flew the nest years ago, of course. There is a time that needs
no mother in it. But when the day comes and she no longer
breathes the living air, one is as a shorebird without a shore.
Neither north nor south. Or now, perhaps, you’re as the shore without
the bird. You can prepare yourself, a friend had said; what starts, ends.
But there’s no easy getting used to her never coming back.
Still, though, the way the days keep landing, and the birds, though fewer,
keen and cry: what it was she passed to you does not cease. Life keeps
living all that lived. Shrike-thrush, for instance, naming all the ways.
* a poem written last week to console a friend on the sudden loss of her mother.
© Mark Tredinnick
Mark Tredinnick, the author of twenty-five celebrated works of poetry and prose, is the author, most recently, of House of Thieves, One Hundred Poems. His books on the writing craft have touched the lives and works of many. He runs What the Light Tells, an online poetry masterclass, and teaches at the University of Sydney. His edited collection of essays for Robert Gray, Bright Crockery Days, is just out from 5 Islands Press, whose managing editor he is. Mark lives and works southwest of Sydney on Gundungurra Country.