I was a child who loved parrots

everything my mother ate and drank
passed on to me       as I lay curled inside her
still only the size of a small bat
comforted by darkness
 
I like to think I remember
the days she soothed us both
as we lay in the waters of a hot spring meadow
listening to cows all round us
pulling on cool grass
that would be translated into milk
into the first sinews and nerves of my body
till I was bound so tight into the landscape
she swears I was born with a stamp on my forehead
“made in New Zealand”
 
my mother loved to tell
how southern sun poured down on her
how one day she forgot to turn
the sign on the wicker gate
to read OCCUPIED
and a stranger came
lay beside her in the hot spring water
told her that clouds
floating up from the horizon
were snow babies    born in southern mountains
told her the birds of the islands would bless her child
the kakapo    the yellow and red-crowned
and orange-fronted parakeets
the kiwi   the bellbird    even the long dead moa
 

Caroline Carver

published in Quadrant magazine (Australia), 2017