The Conscious Parrots

Monk parakeets, the towers cellular,
the places where they build their nests of sticks.
Their cries to parrots are most similar.
It’s their demeanor and intelligence,
that’s, to Psittacidae, peculiar.
They always travel in a mated pair.

One day when I was exiting my car,
parked in the lot, the yoga studio’s,
I heard from far above, up in the air
the sounds of their distinctive squawking cries.
Two parakeets flew in a pattern there.
An interlocking spiral, they descend,
and, near to me, upon the ground, they land.

With just a little flapping of her wings,
the larger female then began to speak:

“Our population was established here
some 50 years ago when we escaped,
or sometimes, we on purpose were released.
A local breeder had released nineteen
in 1981 in Zilker Park.
Our nests are dense, and in the winter time,
we share them with some other mating pairs,
and in this way we trap our body heat,
and thus survive the Texas winter’s cold,
contrary to our, nature, tropical.

“Somehow because, in close proximity
to those transmissions through the cellular
antennas where we lived and made our nests,
the electromagnetic waves transmit 
the human words and data, images,
there is a structure in our parrot brains
that’s part of our unique biology,
like the caudate putamen in your own.
Radio frequencies we can receive,
and we began to understand your words.
When we increased our speech in frequency,
repeating certain phrases that we heard,
once we had mastered it, the art of speech,
a short step to achieving consciousness.
And now there is a population, small,
of parakeets with the intelligence
to conjoin meaning to the words they speak.
Then, to emotions, words, we correlate.
The actions of you humans we observed.
It’s from our natural curiosity,
we activate our brains’ biology.
This was the way we, consciousness, achieved.
Now we can link real meaning to our words
which formerly were only parroting,
the sounds devoid of all significance.

“This, how our parrot conscience has arose,
unburied finally from that strange occult–
the fall where all the animals lost speech.
How sin had covered all our consciences.

“A secret message, here, to bring to you,
and speak it to you in our squawking voice.
All of we birds observe a common law.
The Raven King is he who sent us here,
king of all birds (he is at least for now).
Him, by our common law, we must obey
(The separate Codex for the Flightless Birds–
the penguins, emus, and the ostriches:
the only birds who, literacy, have.
With written words, how they communicate.)
and his commands.  This is pertaining you: 

“‘There is no meaning that we can divine 
from our existence in and of itself,
but only, how, each challenge, we confront.
When all is right and going in our way,
there’s no distress, but sometimes all at once,
all we can do is to observe ourselves.
Not, with the negative, identify,
but also see how we self-justify.
Assert our right to not be negative.
And of ourselves we are not critical.
We understand the multiplicity,
the carousel of our identities.
The only antidote, the remedy:
administration of the conscious shock.
Move in our minds to self-remembering. 
We are, our consciences, unburying.’”