visitor to the Garden

watching the goldfinches delicately tap at their plastic tube of black niger seeds


On Hearing A Goldfinch





On the power cable above the roadway I hear a goldfinch sing
His song to many country people is a familiar thing
A pretty bird to look at his song one often hear
In the Spring and the Summer in the Southern Hemisphere
His ancestors introduced from Britain from places far away
But in South Eastern Australia often seen birds today
Known by their lovely colours and their low toned twittering song
To the true finches of Europe their pedigree belong
As a school-going boy in Ireland in April and in May
I often heard the goldfinches singing on evenings damp and gray
And often in the grove by my old home I heard them at daybreak
By their good looks and pleasant song them one could not mistake
On the electrical cable above the road I hear a goldfinch sing
On a mild day in October in the far southern Spring.


Francis Duggan