Parrots grab you, scarlet
feathers redefining red
as beauty tinged with danger.
Loud, persistent, irrefutable,
they swear to you the moment
matters: mangoes
you balance in firm fingers,
claws curved around your wrist.
Above, warm winds push sky
at tough-barked palms; below
ferns curl and curve and spike.
Orchids open intricate mouths
to share the tongue of a sharp
beaked kiss, and tiny spiders
like fallen stars spin strands
from vine to petal to leaf.
When you walk circling paths
soft with cedar, firm with bone
you find green and fuller green
and a woman working, always
working: her silver hair
a drift of light, her sun-turned
hands like lifted wings,
her voice the core of this
hard island
where what fiercely
shrieks for love
survives beyond a throat
that sweetly sings.
—
For twenty years Katharyn Howd Machan led a writing workshop in Key West, Florida, to benefit Nancy Forrester’s Secret Garden and parrot rescue. Year-round she is a professor in the Writing Department of Ithaca College in central New York State. Her most recent collections are Dark Side of the Spoon, A Slow Bottle of Wine, and What the Piper Promised, all selected in national competitions.
