LUNCH
The zoo. So one thinks up from
the amoeba, way ahead to one's great-grandchildrensomeday or no day. Then back where old
photographs live, those minutes
locked in the ice of someone's remembering, some uncle
with a camera. But the zoo – here! –
is very matter-of fact: warm bodies (monkeys,
zebras, any moving thing
with beak, with feathers) versus
the flashing cold and/or hot ones: the bite-the-dirt-for-all-we-do-wrong ones
or the soft-bellied frog or the salamander flattened,shrunk, puffed out, its legs, arms,
sweet little claws completely
not a snake, having lured no one and nothing.
I was saying: consider the metal bars. To keep
such wonders in, to keep us – smaller wonders – out.
Almost noon, some uniformed someone
turns up with bananas, seeds,
fetal pigs, apples, the works. How not
to love this guy?–his trusty
indifference, his all-right-another-day-of-it
shrug and off-key whistle. The animals
look up. Something is about to happen. Food
does that. In this saddest of worlds, think
lunch! and an ocean of hope
rides over us. Is it hope? And too cheap? This
metaphor filling the moment? the mind?
the life finally and exactly? I mean
the guy's coming closer, the one
with a bucket. And a shovel.