Woven feathers, eternal spirits, green destiny

Poem inspired by my life story.

Verde Destino
Between cables and sky
your emerald flight fell.
You broke eggs in my cradle,
planted trees in my soul.
Twelve years of distance,
a shoulder that remembers you.
Broken feathers that taught
the true meaning of freedom.

@carolinalmar

WOVEN FEATHERS, ETERNAL SPIRITS, VERDE DESTINO

The elders of Antioquia tell of a time in the mountains of the south, where dawns paint the hillsides gold and afternoons wrap the valleys in purple shadow, when an Amazonian parrot lived whose fate was mysteriously bound to that of a girl not yet born.
In those days, as the city began stretching its concrete fingers into land that had belonged only to trees and wind, this parrot — emerald-feathered, with golden markings on its face — crossed the sky like a guardian of the heights. Each morning, an elderly couple waited for it on the balcony of their city home. The grandmother, worn paintbrushes between her fingers, captured its flight on canvas that would become tablecloths and curtains. The grandfather, hands trembling with age, scattered seeds in the yard, the way you leave small treasures for a friend you have never touched.
Not far away, on a farm surrounded by mountains, the couple's daughter waited for the birth of her first child, while her husband worked the land with the wisdom inherited from generations before him.

One day, when the sun stood at its highest, the unthinkable happened. Urban expansion had woven an invisible web of cables across the sky. The parrot, distracted by a glint of light, did not see the modern trap until it was too late. Its wings tangled in that metal snare and, like a green star, it plummeted into the elderly couple's yard. The impact was sharp — the sound of a broken promise.
"It fell! The parrot fell!" the old woman cried, dropping her brushes.

The grandfather ran as he had not run in decades. There lay the magnificent bird, one wing bent at an impossible angle, one leg no longer answering its will. They lifted it with the care you use to lift a dream, wrapped it in a cloth embroidered with birds and plants, and called their son-in-law.
"You must take it with you," the old man said, his voice breaking. "In the city it will die. On your land, even injured, it has a chance."

The man — son of farmers, now husband of a woman about to give birth — took the parrot in his calloused hands. On the way back to his home in the mountains, he feared his wife would turn away the wounded bird he was bringing.
"It's a gift of love," he told her as he introduced the injured parrot. "A fallen guardian that needs our care now."

The woman, her belly full and her eyes full of compassion, welcomed the unexpected visitor. What no one knew then was that this meeting between the parrot and the family would change the course of their lives forever.
The man's own parents — farmers themselves — looked at the bird with knowing eyes and said: "Don't give it a name. It is not a pet. It is a free being that needs to heal."

And so began a passionate argument between the grandparents about which trees would be best for the parrot. The grandfather insisted on guava trees; the grandmother held out for orange trees.
— Parrots need sweet fruit! — he argued.
— They need variety and color! — she replied.

In the end, the winner was unexpected: the land itself. In their eagerness to please the parrot, the elders ended up planting dozens of native fruit trees — guava, orange, mango, avocado, and others whose seeds they had kept like treasures from ancestral times. Without realizing it, they were creating a living sanctuary that would last for generations, a legacy of trees that half a century later would still give shade and food.

Meanwhile, the parrot began to heal. Its wing improved over time, though it would never again fly with the same height and grace. Its leg stayed slightly twisted, giving it a peculiar walk the family came to recognize by the sound of its steps on the wooden roof.

The turning point came on a February morning before dawn, when the sky was still dark and the house was asleep. The pregnant woman woke with the first pains: labor had come early. Her husband, panicked by how far they were from town and hospital, ran to wake his parents.

That was when something extraordinary happened: the parrot, as if it understood the weight of the moment, began making a sound no one had heard from it before. It was not a squawk or a song — it was almost a call, an alarm that spread through the valley.

Half an hour later, a midwife passing by chance on the nearby road heard that unusual call and, guided by an instinct she could not explain, approached the farm. Her arrival was providential: the birth was complicated, the umbilical cord wrapped around the baby's neck. Without the midwife's intervention, neither the mother nor little Carolina would have survived.
"It was the parrot who brought her," the grandmother would say years later. "It was her guardian before she was even born."

Carolina's first two years unfolded in a strange dance with that feathered being that never received a name. The parrot moved freely around the farm, coming and going from the house as it pleased, stealing eggs from the kitchen, and — to everyone's consternation — developing a fascination with the small girl.

It would slip into her room when the adults were not watching. Once inside, it pecked at the blanket until Carolina lay uncovered. Strangest of all, it would take the eggs it had stolen and break them over the baby's body, as though performing some ritual incomprehensible to humans.

This behavior, though fascinating, began to worry the family. The paternal grandmother, after months of watching, finally confronted her daughter-in-law with an impossible question: "The girl or the parrot? One of them has to go."

The decision was painful but clear: Carolina could not be raised in those conditions. The dilemma now was what to do with the parrot. In those days, nearly three decades ago, there were no bird sanctuaries or wildlife rescue organizations within reach of a farming family.

To everyone's surprise, two days before the agreed date for moving the parrot, the bird disappeared. The whole family searched desperately across the farm — checking trees, rooftops, and corners — fearing a predator had taken it, or that it had left on instinct, as though sensing the coming change.
"The parrot is gone!" Carolina's mother wept, with a mix of guilt and relief at not having to face a painful goodbye.

But on the third day of searching, something unexpected happened. The grandfather took down an old blue hammock, inherited across generations, to distract himself from the sadness. As he stretched it between two guava trees, he heard a soft murmur. There, coiled among the folds of the fabric, was the parrot, curled up as though it had found a temporary nest.
"It was waiting for the right moment," the grandfather would tell Carolina years later. "That hammock — which is now yours — was its last shelter with us."

After that discovery, they found a farmer from a distant village who agreed to take the parrot. On the day of the farewell, the bird seemed to understand what was happening. It did not try to escape when they placed it in a perforated box for the journey; it only made a soft sound, almost like a sigh, that made Carolina's mother cry.
"If I could go back," my mother told me years later, "I would have built a separate shelter, found veterinary care for its injured leg, found another solution. But at the time we only did what we thought was best."

Life moved on. Carolina grew up surrounded by the fruit trees her great-grandparents had planted for the parrot. The story of the bird became family legend, told at gatherings and celebrations, always with an undertone of nostalgia and guilt.

Twelve years later, Carolina — now a curious teenager with a love of nature — walked with her grandfather along paths far from the farm. It was a routine they both treasured: leaving at dawn, watching the mountains wake up, checking on the cattle in neighboring pastures.

On one of those walks they came near a farmhouse Carolina had never visited. Suddenly, a flash of green caught her eye. Among the nearby trees, a parrot with emerald plumage and golden markings on its face flew with a slightly uneven flight. Something in the bird's gaze stopped the girl cold.

Time seemed to pause as their eyes met. The parrot, as if driven by a memory deeper than time, flew straight to her and landed on her shoulder. Carolina, who held no conscious memory of her childhood companion, felt, even so, an immediate and inexplicable connection.
"Oh — the parrot!" her grandfather exclaimed, his voice breaking with emotion.

They sat under a tree, sharing blackberry popsicles they had brought for the road, while her grandfather told the full story: how the parrot had been the first to welcome her into the world, how it had mysteriously called the midwife who saved her life, how it had performed those strange rituals with the eggs — rituals that now, seen with the wisdom of years, looked like its own way of trying to protect her.
"Do you know why it broke the eggs over you?" the grandfather reflected. "The old farmer who took it explained it to me years later. In nature, some adult birds feed their chicks by regurgitating food over them. It was identifying you as its chick — it was adopting you."

Tears ran down Carolina's cheeks. The parrot, still on her shoulder, brought its beak close to her face with care, almost as if it were drying one of those tears.
"They never caged it," the grandfather went on. "The farmer respected our one condition: that it could fly free. Without knowing it, we gave it the best life possible."

That reunion changed Carolina. She understood that the fruit trees surrounding her home were not just trees: they were a living legacy, an act of love from her great-grandparents toward a being they considered worthy of respect, even though it was not human.
She also understood that, sometimes, loving means letting go. Her parents and grandparents had loved the parrot enough to give up its company when they realized they could not offer it what it needed.

Today, decades later, Carolina has become a science communicator and artist dedicated to conservation. Every time she paints a mural, every time she writes about the importance of protecting native species, she remembers that nameless parrot that connected four generations of her family and permanently changed her relationship with the natural world.
The fruit trees still stand, larger and fuller than ever, and though the Amazonian parrot has likely long since stopped flying over the mountains of Antioquia, its spirit lives on in every bird Carolina watches in freedom, in every stroke of her brush, in every word she writes defending each living being's right to fly free.

Because, as her grandfather taught her that day of reunion, sharing blackberry popsicles in the generous shade of a tree: "Parrots, like true love, belong to no one. They only visit our lives to remind us that real connection transcends time, distance, and even the differences between species."

Like @carolinalmar, I want to be part of Fundación Loros — to learn more about these birds and contribute to their conservation. My goal is to create murals that tell the stories of these extraordinary beings and raise awareness about why their freedom matters. I also want to use my platform as a science communicator and the wide audience I have to inspire people and connect them to this and other stories in support of conserving, recovering, and protecting these powerful birds. This experience would not only let me close a personal circle — it would let me use my art and communication as tools to protect those who, like that nameless parrot, deserve to cross the sky.

Analysis and reflections from Fundación Loros

We hold onto the image of the grandfather and grandmother planting trees in a rush, convinced the forest had to grow at the same pace as the parrot's wing healed. That decision — plant first, release after — turns the farm into a living refuge: the bird finds oranges, mangoes, and guavas just as it learns to trust its wings again. What we see is a freedom that is accompanied, almost negotiated between species, rather than an impulsive escape.

We are also moved by the invisible thread connecting the parrot to Carolina. On the day of the birth, its strange cry summons the midwife as if it sensed what was at stake; years later, the scene repeats when the bird lands on the teenager's shoulder and recognizes her without hesitation. We understand then that the real domestication happened in reverse: it was the parrot who adopted the family.

We also understand that love is not about holding on, but about caring until the other is ready to leave. The blue hammock where the bird takes shelter before departing, and the trees that keep bearing fruit decades later, are traces of a love that frees rather than confines. In the end, it is inspiring to see Carolina turn these memories into art: perhaps her murals will do what those guava trees did — prepare more places where parrots, and those who care for them, can feel free.