At the zoo,
- At the zoo,
among the Chilean flamingos, there was always one lone swan.What were its days? What was it like to be dressed in white
when all the rest were decked out in creamy coral? Laughing at the anticsof the thick-kneed squawkers, their skirmishes and scuffles, but then
the solitary like the Earth only whiter, only winged, and whetherit had a mother and a father, and if so where, and did the tapirs
have parents? They don’t have mothers anymore, I could’ve said.Or their mother is at the store, buying krill and grasshoppers,
said in a high-pitched voice I can’t remember when I inventedto laugh off helplessness, morbidity, dread, for when the children’s
moon doesn’t shine down on a mother and child, on a stroller,here down the path past the pink stuffed birds I keep my daughter
from wanting by explaining whoever made them was color blind,here with Ginger and Lucy, sister hippos sprawled on the stubby grass
like slabs of slick brown rock. And lucky us, while we’re discussingthe lives of caged tigers, the two gals come waddling toward us for a soak,
ladies without much need for air—sometimes down under so longit’s like they’re dead, and then a bubbly sppppppprrrrrrrrrrr. [End Page 87] [End Page 88]
Martha Silano’s most recent books are Reckless Lovely (Saturnalia Books) and, with Kelli Russell Agodon, The Daily Poet: Day-by-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice (Two Sylvias Press). She serves as poetry editor at Crab Creek Review and teaches at Bellevue College.
