Best done among orchids, it takes
a gentle voice. Find one or two
gripping a palm’s layered bark
or poised on lichen-softened rock
to listen, small eyes bright.
Tell them you have come to the island
to taste the sun this garden offers,
a thousand tricks and turns of green
breeze ripples through soft paths.
Tell them you have seen the spider
spin her web so round and wide
its silver silk connects a hundred
petals, fronds, vines, stems, trunks
of trees that rise so high
they play blue sky like music.
Ask them Have you heard the chimes,
the parrots’ rainbow cries, rush
of water flowing mornings
from the gray-haired one’s strong hands? Then wait, unmoving, still. Watch
the tiny pulse in each smooth throat,
the deep stripe down long tail:
before the flick of tongue, the flight,
silence will have said it all
within this time of blossoms’ curve,
this fragile world of lasting light.
—
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.
