Zoo
Mark Irwin
In her old age, Mother enjoys going to the zoo
as the trees let loose their yellow leaves
and stand like furniture among the grazing animals
who stare from a long distance. Often I think
this could be a story she's telling me as we walk
growing larger and more cold, watching the little clouds
our words make, and in the distance --
buffalo3, built
of the earth, with their horns made of rock, their coats
of dried grass. Only drama without movement
is beautiful, said Simone Weil, speaking of Lear, and soon
everything's
ablaze4 and we're running toward youth,
and the skyline of a city, its fossil, while animals, shrieking,
stampede past us, and mother calls out their names,
zebra, buffalo, gazelle, ever so clearly, then enters
into shadow with them, that diorama we call memory.
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