Feather

If only every day was as simple as listening to birds, their small voices
plucking the grey-blue morning, emboldened on this first day of spring.
We too might dare to hope that what has long been desired is not so far away.
Let’s suppose it is here already, as real as this room’s radiator
switching itself on and off; the thermostat of our longing unhindered
by a dial of hours. Rather it exists in a kind of elsewhere,
or takes form in the wanderer who crosses bridges and borders
without restraint. Better to loosen the tangle of our rough wishes,
of the could-have-beens and might-have-beens and know we had it all,
just for a moment. Beneath the clamour of sounds –
logging trucks rattle to and fro from the port, a dog barks at the passersby.
A friend writes a message, subvoce – imagine, imagine,
and the bird that sheds a feather without knowing,
is the one we might change upon, pick up and carry home.

Majella Cullinane
from Whisper of a Crow’s Wing, Otago University Press, 2018

Majella Cullinane writes essays, fiction and poetry and has lived in Aotearoa since 2008. She has published three poetry collections with Salmon Poetry Ireland and Otago University Press. Her most recent, Meantime (Otago University Press 2024) was chosen as The New Zealand Listener’s Top Poetry Books Of 2024. In 2020 she graduated with a PhD in Creative Practice from the University of Otago. Her short story collection Islands Ever After (Quentin Wilson Publishing) will be published in June this year. She lives with her family in Kōpūtai, Port Chalmers.

The Poetry Shelf Breathing Room: A place to enter and pause and take a long slow breath and then another, as you absorb the beauty movement joy stillness wonder movement of a poem.