Super-sized series

 Welcome to the Zoo

 
Baby kangaroo peeks out from his mother’s pouch 

Hanging with Kangaroos by Shelly Blankman

April 2024 Kangaroo Crossing at the San Antonio Zoo

No metal bars, trenches, or windows to separate us
from them. Just wide-open space, where they thump
softly through red sand, whooshing past us with a baby
known as a joey or two tucked in their pouches.

Others laze in the sun, young joeys, still in their pouches, 
peeking out with their deep brown eyes lined with lush
lashes, open for the first time. Older ones are never far 
away, ready to retreat to the pouch when they are hungry.
No fear of predators or loud noises. Or other animals. 
They speak in quiet grunts and groans, clicks and coughs.

We settle in the red sand next to them, as if we’re part
of their family. They let us pet their wooly fur that’s smooth
as velvet and smells like coffee beans. As we leave, we 
hear the muted sound of a sneeze. It’s the voice of a baby
whose limbs are too weak for her to emerge from the pouch.
She will make her debut when her limbs are strong enough.

I wish we could stay there long enough to greet her.






Here They Come! By Alarie Tennille

May 18, 2020, Kansas City Zoo

While humans are quarantined,
penguins get their first tour 
of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.


Tiny tourists in tuxedos burst
into the galleries. 

The paintings look down from their frames,
silently chuckling. They miss visitors 
as much as these new Friends of Art, 
who gawk back at them 
with equal wonder.

The zoo guests prove to be
discerning critics. Water lilies?
Not part of their habitat. 
But John the Baptist?
Him they can relate to.

Caravaggio captures the fatigue
of a tired dad, trying to keep up
with toddlers. Drooping in the heat,
he sits slumped, splayed legs, 
happy to stay right there, 
watching them for hours.


First published in Three A.M. at the Museum

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/penguins-get-private-tour-of-kansas-city-art-museum-closed-during-pandemic



 

Two poems by Sharon Waller Knutson



Eyeball to Eyeball with Giraffes 

As we stand on the observation
deck at the Phoenix Zoo in 1996,
a giraffe family runs to the fence
to observe the strange humans.
Papa Giraffe stretches his neck
and tongues the top of the trees
to snack on shoots and leaves
while Mama Giraffe snakes
her neck over the fence
towards me as if bestowing
a kiss on my cheek and snatches
my saddlebag from my shoulder
and Junior Giraffe grabs the glasses
off my husband’s face
and they run across the grass
like thieves, my bag banging
against the fence and spilling
ID cards and dollar bills, 
liquid makeup and perfume
bottles like clues in a crime
scene. As they chomp and chew,
I stare at the sign that says:
Do Not Feed the Animals
and the dire consequences
of fines and jail time if you do.

 

EZ and the Monkey

The covers lift and I stare into blue eyes
blinding as a blizzard. Ow! Ow! Ow! he says.
This elf in red pajamas with feet in them
scurries like a squirrel under the covers
and curves his body warm as a loaf 

of freshly baked bread against my pain
wracked back. I dream of soaking
in a hot springs and then soaring pain-free
through the sky in a rocket ship.

I awaken to my husband’s voice.
There’s a boy in our bed, he says,
scooping up the sleeping child.
Our daughter stands in the doorway.
Oh, there you are., she says. This is EZ.
Your great grandchild.

The stiffness is gone but my back
is still sore from the drive from Arizona
to Utah. So my husband wheels me
to the breakfast table where EZ
is bent over a bowl of blueberries.
I go back to bed after breakfast.

I awaken to a cell phone in my face.
It’s a video of a monkey in the zoo.
Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! he says. He keeps
pointing at the monkey.

 I realize he wants to heal the pain
of the monkey the way he healed my pain.
EZ and I want to go to the zoo
to see the monkey, I announce.

My daughter and husband are skeptical.
But an old lady in a wheelchair
and a kid that can’t talk are pretty hard
to resist. So they give in.

My husband drives. She stays home.
Don’t touch people, she warms him.
He puts his hand on my sore spot
as soon as she shuts the door.

EZ is more reliable than Google
Gal and  GPS. He even guides
us to the Monkey House.

Riding on my lap with a beanie and a blanket 
he looks just like any other kid at the zoo
with his elderly grandparents. Not a crazed healer
on a mission. We are watching the monkeys

chattering and swinging when I realize EZ
is missing and I don’t see a sick monkey. I panic
and then I see him standing near the fence
staring at a monkey still as a statue, mouth closed.

I watch the monkey inching towards EZ. It seems like hours
but soon they are eye to eye and the monkey straightens
up and I fear he is going to keel over dead. But he dances
away with the other monkeys and EZ returns to me.
Okay, he says, and motions that he wants to go home.

We return to Arizona and months later my back is screaming
in pain again and the phone rings.. I know it is EZ.
Ow! Ow! Ow! he says. I feel heat swirling through
the receiver and my back relaxes and the pain is gone.
Okay, he says, and hangs up. How do you get rid of pain?
everyone asks me. It’s easy, I say. Then I smile.

 


Christmas Eve at the Zoo by Joe Cottonwood

December 24, 1982 at the National Zoo in Washington DC

Elephants, your favorites, are knocking 
at the door to the elephant house. How does 
an elephant knock? Hard. With trunk.

It’s cold out here. 
I squeeze your little hand.
A baby wallaby studies us from mother’s pouch. 
Wrapped in my coat against my legs, 
you study back. 

Giraffes make passes at an open door 
but their bodies are a collection
of angles and the door is quite specific. 
I call to them, “Watch your head!” 
You lift your eyes upward, then sideways and say 
“How can they watch their own heads?”

In the monkey house one gorilla 
stares blankly at a television, Gilligan’s Island
while another turns his back and regurgitates 
which is how I would feel, too.

I wonder, “Do they want to hang stockings?”
You say, “Not all animals celebrate Christmas.”
Then you add: “Just like people.”

Already you understand:
    we go to the zoo 
    to see ourselves.


 

Refuge by Robbi Nester

When I am stressed or caught up in the world’s 
bad news, I ride the train down to the aviary 
at the San Diego Zoo, where Birds of Paradise 
approach my open hand, and nesting toucans 
peer out from their box high in a banana tree, 
its broad leaves ribbed like feathers in a parrot’s 
wing. There are benches where I can be 
anonymous for hours, watching hummingbirds 
delve scarlet bromeliads, white ginger lilies, 
with their spicy scent. I read, or listen, watch 
the birds in their small jungle alongside species 
they would never meet in ordinary life: crowned 
pigeons from New Guinea, with their orange eyes, 
blue plumage, stalk the same paths as Egyptian Ibis. 
Small creatures haunt the branches-- a family 
of pygmy marmosets, with tiny perfect hands, 
human faces, dik dik, mouse deer, calmly 
browsing on the flowers and the fruits, almost 
invisible. An orange Cock of the Rock stands 
before me on the railing, bright Bee Eaters 
whiz by my head. Under the waterfall, Roseate 
Spoonbills feed. I always feel at home here, with 
other bipeds, who do not seem to judge me for my 
want of feathers. I’m simply part of their ecology. 
By the time I leave, it’s late. I track the nascent 
moon through the wrought iron of the aviary.

Formerly published in Live Encounters



 

In Tanzania by Marilyn L. Taylor

Tonight I sleep
with the grass-eaters:
zebra and wildebeest
doze in clusters
near my tent, as moonlight
gathers in pools
over the high savannah.

Even under canvas I
am caught in a current
of dread as it eddies
past, ruffling mane
and beard. My herd
shudders as if one
creature, and listens.

Now the deep African sky
lifts a glittering claw;
we, the vulnerable, hear
the rasp of death
and twitch our haunches
as the golden cat
begins her dance.

Note: Milwaukee County Zoo has posted “In Tanzania” at the entrance to their lion exhibit.