Owl’s secrets are secret by Manola Gayatri

I realised Owl was to be my baby’s parent,
It was not that we fell in love or that it was a convenient option,
It’s just that we were at an interspecies gathering one fall,
Owl sat by the stream fluffing their feathers and spoke of births,
I had a dream of little beings made through lives that loved living,
So I asked Owl if it would be a parent with me and they said yes,
Continuing to fluff their feathers and peer at pebbles in the stream.
“That was easy,” I thought and forgot about it for some years
When next we meet Owl had our children with them.
“How?” I asked.
“It’s the magic of an owl speaking your language and you mine,” they said.
Our children, with feathers and beaks, fins and coiled hair, would not speak.
Not to us at least.

Manola Gayatri is a poet, writer and teacher. She lives in Bangalore with a cohabiting canine, she calls Bazooka.