Zen Oleary: Macaws

Birds molt and grow new feathers.
Is this what I am doing with you?
I don't recognize these burnished blues

with their dark tips or their length
or how they lay over my breast

and cover my heart or how they
fall down the length of my wings.
You are transforming me,

creating me as this creature of us
till I have to check in the mirror

and this hyacinth macaw stares back
as if from the canopy,
with feathers bluer than the sky,

and I, confused, look for
my gray-green and dark red self.

You have grown blue feathers too
and we speak now in these new voices,
in parrot words and incantations

and love songs and soar on
four foot wingspans across rivers

and mountains and jungle terrain
thick with banana trees and flowering palms.
Are we macaws now forever?

Poetry Chaikhana
Sacred Poetry from Around the World

About Zen Oleary

Poetry Chaikhana Sacred Poetry from Around the World

About Zen Oleary

Poetry Chaikhana
Sacred Poetry from Around the World