Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume One
November- December 2025
Starling Hope, poems by Moya Pacey.
Starling Hope
I hadn’t seen a starling for a long time until one morning, two slender
birds arrive intent on building a nest. Their plumage— iridescent purple,
and green shimmers in the light. He is all backwards and forwards flight
selecting and carrying each supple twig to fashion the outer layer of their nest.
When he’s done, she flits to–and-fro, choosing every blade of grass,
each leaf, and tiny feather, to line the interior of the nest where she’ll
sit and brood upon their eggs until they hatch within.
They have built in a place where it will fall—a space where the garage
door meets the brick wall—mistaken it for an eave. I can’t leave it there,
so before they fasten it with mud and clay, I intervene and take it down.
Block off the gap with cardboard and hope they’ll find a safer spot.
I know the nest will fall but how can they?
Just as I will never know
the why of why some days
begin with that same starling
hope that all will be well until
a long arm stretches
a steady hand reaches
five fingers feel
and find
my nest.
Birdsong
When the wonga
Whoops,
The currawong swoops—
Whoosh!
Black feather, black beak,
Eight toes, each digit
An evolution of malice.
Clack!
The currawong sounds
Its long, long lament.
Pelican
Ludicrous on land.
The god of pelican designed her
to partner with water and air.
To rise and lift in graceful
pas de deux.
How does she
get her weight to soar,
stay steady and fly wondrous?
Setting down on water,
we wait for—
a belly-flop.
It never happens.
She descends
like a lover
after a long absence.
One slow caress—
a perfect embrace
of bird and water.
© Moya Pacey
Moya Pacey’s third poetry collection, Doggerland (Recent Work Press 2020) was highly commended in 2021 ACT Book of the Year Awards.
She is a founding editor of the women’s on-line journal Not Very Quiet and in 2019, received a Canberra Critics Circle Award, with Sandra Renew, for her influential work on women’s poetry.
Her poetry has featured on buses and radio, in galleries and has appeared in print and online journals and anthologies here and overseas and has won prizes.
In October 2018, she was the Poet in Residence at the Elizabeth Bishop House in Great Village, Nova Scotia, Canada. She has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Listen to Moya read and talk about her poetry https://artsound.fm/poetry-on-the-radio/.