Animal Poems
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Prologue
A documentary was produced telling the story of a scientist who committed a good part of her life studying the life of Koko, a low land gorilla, that was raised in captivity from birth. For forty-four years Koko literally lived as a child. The scientist devoted her life to Koko pursuing studies related to the cognitive and speech capabilities of animals, specifically Koko. Koko learned several hundred sign language signs and displayed very human like emotions and physical actions. The intuitive and actual connections between animals and humans are obvious. The intuitive and natural connection between children and animals is an ongoing experiment in our bond with animals. Our love and fascination and involvement and knowledge of animals is part of our humanity.
Cat
She is like all cats
Treating everyone
With a benign
Half friendly
Flaunting
Ego piercing
Eye intimidating
Indifference.
She will not respond to calls
Or whistles or pleasant threats
She is not a dog and accepts no dog-like behavior
She hides in warm places
Or places she makes warm
She aims her solid eyes
That peer into the back of your head.
She reigns over the night
Prowling and stalking
To the same rhythm as the tiger
And then she dismisses the night
With the deepest of all sleeps
Impervious to clock time
Or people time
Or spins of the earth
For the cadence and tempo of her life
Is visceral and instinctual and pleasantly primitive.
Tiger in a Zoo
Tiger in a zoo
Try to understand
That one of us must be in a cage
To keep us apart
Or else we must kill each other
One must wonder
Are you all skin and teeth and stripes
And vibrating and pulsating muscles
With no soul behind your eyes.
Do you close your eyes
Imagine roaming the bush
And sharpen you claws on trees?
Did you have a lover
And plant your seed so you will live forever?
Does the memory of your jungle passions live in you?
Does your mother
Still search the savannah seeking you
Or search her memory
Where you will remain ageless?
If they left the door open
Would you run or pretend not to see the opportunity to escape?
At the end of the day
Are you sick of the smell and peering eyes
The crying children and the spit and the litter and the taunting?
If you could would you kill yourself
Crashing your head against the bars
Or would you starve yourself
Or cut your jugular with your paw
And fall into an endless sleep in the warm blood?
Do you know how many people
Who live in the cages outside of yours
Would walk into the grasp of your paw
The vice of your mouth
If you would promise to be quick and painless?
Cricket
The cricket clicks to the cadence
Of his own drum
Setting the evening clock ticking
Precisely as the night swallows
The sunset in one dismissive gulp
The ballad of the cricket is tuneless and yet
Musically foot tapping and contagious and precise
As the night creatures
Tune their instruments to the cricket cadence
Conducted and orchestrated with joy
In a nocturnal summer symphony.
Frog
Frog
You are brother
To the turtle and the fish
Master of the pond
The voice of the swamp
You join April
In its journey to summer
When you will alternate
Between swimming in the sun and the water.
You sing your single note
And are the envy of the silent butterfly
Your staccato hop
Is the dream of the turtle
You’re swift and silent tongue
The envy of the bird
You have been greened
From the shadowed trees and plants
And baptized by the same waters
As the father of all frogs.
Only you know
How many bees have buzzed
Into the tunnel of your throat
And how many mosquitoes
Have kissed your wet tongue
And tasted eternity
You live on the lip of the water
And the shore
And are owned by neither
But own then both
No wonder you sit so proud
And stare the world down.
The Little Frog and Me
I saw a frog and caught his eye
And as quickly he caught mine
He drank a little morning dew
While I sipped a glass of wine
He jumped upon a goldenrod
And peaked inside its bloom
I picked a rose from a bush
As he croaked a little tune
He went hopping down the lane
Inspecting every bush and tree
I joined him in his morning walk
Just the little frog and me
He must have gotten very tired
Because he napped upon a stone
I watched him in his solitude
And then I did not feel alone
Fortunate to find each other
We could share a day together
But where would we sit and talk
In a pond or in the heather?
And so we sat side by side
Among daffodils and birds
We need not speak a word at all
We spoke with silent words
Content and imperturbable
Happier we could not be
Soaking up the noon day sun
The little frog and me
Sassy
(Remembrance of Sassy (1991? -Tuesday, December 16, 2003)
Sassy was named impetuously
By the sassy-ness of her demeanor
As she barnstormed
Without name or history
Into our home and our hearts
On an icicled December night
She brought her warmth into our home
From the cold
She came one night and stayed a lifetime.
She greets every unknown lap openly
Cuddles shamelessly on any stray leg
Velcroes herself to any warm body
Flaunting those green globed eyes
In the evening shadows
She is the blackest of blacks except for the apron of white
Framing her chest
And in the noon time sun
Her coat glistened as polished ebony.
Her stare is pleasantly unfathomable
She expresses a giggle or laugh or smirk or surprise
With a facial slight of hand
She does not respond to calls
Or whistles or pleasant or feigned threats
She is not a dog.
She sleeps-slumbers-naps-dozes-snoozes-nods
In any venue and in countless gymnastic positions
At any time for any reason
She hides in warm places
Or places she makes warm
Her tail endlessly quivering
Like some misguided comma
She lays quiet in dark places
Where she blanks and blinks the world away
She aims and lasers the black slits of her green eyes
As she reigns over the night
Prowling and stalking
To the same rhythm as her ancestral felines
Or dismisses the night in a whim.
Her sleeps are deep
And one can only wonder
If she dreams some faded memory
Of her mother
Licking her warm and clean
As she suckled her pink nipples
Or recalling the icicled night
She poked her nose into our lives
And we began our journey.
Many years and age and ailments tempered her life
And many trips to Vet’s office with few remedies
She slept quiet and long each day
The decision too long delayed required
One final visit
We each held a hand on her breast
As she breathed gently
And we felt her last heart beat
And the absence of the next one
As she embraced her rainbowed eternity
Where she will frolic
Forever young.
And now she sleeps the deepest of all sleeps
Lying on the crest of the hill above the pond
Facing south and greeting the morning sun
Smelling the seasons of petunias and pansies
And red nosed verbena and dianthus
All suckled by the buzzing bees
Watching geckos whose staccato leaps
Mesmerized and enticed her interest
Observing egrets tiptoeing with hardly a ripple
On the shores below the citrus tree
On the crest of the hill
She sleeps.
Sassy is tattooed in the deep vein of our memory
She is ageless and everlasting in our hearts
There is an eternal warm spot in our laps
Where her memory lies cuddled forever
Her now silent footprints have left eternal tracks
In our hearts and minds
Dear Sassy
Sleep little girl sleep
Sleep well.
Ladybug
Ladybug dear Ladybug
It will be a long winter without you
You must hide from the kiss
Of the winter frost
Dreaming of sun and sky
As you sleep in the vessel of your egg
I have a faded image of you burned in my mind
I see your solid shiny wings
And the symmetry of your design
And try to recall the number of spots
On your speckled shiny wings.
I see your soft silent walk
But fail to recall how many legs you own.
When we meet again
I will memorize you more precisely
With more awareness
And with a more curious and practiced eye.
You have your winter dreams
Of long journeys on short wings
Vacating your winter refuge
To find hyacinths and forsythia
And lavender and lilies
Your myriad complex of legs tip toeing across
The expanse of an oak leaf
Must be exhilarating.
I see you windmill the sky
With your silent wings
As you fly away
Ladybug Ladybug fly away
Please come back another day
Ladybug sleep well
And dream of sun and sky
That will bring us together.
For another season to explore the world.