I fell in love
with cockatoos –
head over heels,
too moved to choose.
A chord was struck,
connections made:
it felt as though
a duet played.
For several weeks
I saw the blacks’
impressive wings
and arrow backs,
the stripe of gold
beneath the tail.
Their flight would snare
my soul to sail.
My time would halt
to watch them eat
with clicking beaks
and grasping feet.
Their yellow patch
was a surprise –
a clown-like touch
below their eyes.
But when they raised
their regal crowns
or flared their tails,
forget the clowns;
and when the pair
embrace the sky,
“O beautiful!”
I call, and cry.
One evening
in the fading light,
they passed above
in low, slow flight,
and something in me
said “Farewell!”
The seeds are gone
and they depart,
and I am left
with longing heart.
Then came a white
with sulphur crest
and raucous call.
Soon four abreast
on small bird bath,
they bowed and drank.
I laughed with joy,
and prayed to thank.
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Barb, poet priest 
So very wonderful. I often expect you to unfold scripture and to open this post to wings was a wonderful surprise! (Not that I don’t love the scripture, but Wow!
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Sometimes the wings seem to connect me to God with a piercing clearness that lifts me above all the wrestling with words about the Word, much as I value that.
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When I first became ill with what are now chronic neurological issues, it was birds that literally saved me. I’ve always loved them, and knew some about them, but we’d go to the zoo in town and I’d just sit, sometimes crying. No matter what was happening with them, they always seemed to adapt. And I lterally lived “Hope is the thing with feathers….”
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Oh Andrea, I cried in response to your comment as i sometimes do in response to the birds – some sort of recognition of the sharing of spirit. Thanks for reminding me that “Hope is the thing with feathers …” That led me to Gerard Manley Hopkins: “Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
world broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
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