For our third set of Poems of the Week we have The Zoo Keeper’s Song by Maggie Sawkins. Sawkins mused, ‘When I was a child, I imagined I would have a job working with animals, but that wasn’t to be. Instead I’ve spent my life working with words, wild and tame, which is the next best thing.’
The Zoo Keeper’s Song
I could watch them for hours
Esmeralda and Zola
strolling up and down
on legs as long as stilted circus clowns.
With my daily offerings
of lettuce, radish grape
I enter the enclosure
run my hand over
the primitive patchwork skin,
watch how they flutter their eyelashes
like two actresses
in an old time move.
When I come back
I want to be the leaves
on the tallest trees
I want to be devoured
by those magnificent tongues.
(From The Zig Zag Woman, Two Ravens Press, 2007)