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

through doorways catching fire, or sit on a stone bench

growing larger and more cold, watching the little clouds

our words make, and in the distance -- buffalo, 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 ablaze 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.