Differ As We Do

lonely creatures lan-

guish at outpost urban zoos,

gathered there for view.

a greenhead mallard—

bored perhaps of unfenced ponds—

flew inside to look

for easy fixings—

if anyone might notice,

no one seemed to care

but the platypus

(who recently was widowed)

calculated thus:

nothing’s here by chance

yet truly fate and fortune

differ as we do

I’m not courting now

and what we’d have in common

isn’t bond enough 

to anchor him from

flying whence he came. But here

we are together:

billed to render what

we will, webbed to push our way

through modest water,

unencumbered, you

and me, and thus encouraged:

“more or less, we’re free.”

“Free?” quacked smirkingly

the mallard, “You cannot leave,

and I absconded

to see what I could

see. That done, I’m fully at

liberty to fly

and try what’s left to

try.” Platypus, then, by chance,

laid her final egg.

“I could have been green-

headed; I might chase you a-

way. I didn’t want

to figure things or

think how they’d turn out. The zoo

has interest in me

and—it seems—in you.

O, the story would be nice

to conjugate, duck-

ing half my duties,

causing folks to cogitate

what I mean by ‘free’.”

“You reckon little

things that never dawned on me?”

And diving down, the

mallard found the weeds

his mate might eat. What husband-

ry remains is up

to fortune, chance, and

fate: mom would nurse the babe, and

dad would test the flight.

And those who’d gather,

leer and think, would second guess

their staying power

as well as all things

green. Tiny worlds are rapt in

such absurdity.

Sonnet No. 3

Add new eggs to the platitudes of May

—enough ovaltine, say, to incubate

the hatch (if not the harrows of the day).

Let every papa penguin learn to wait

for wintry lessons, mid-July, when hope

is all but lost beneath a blackened sky;

for words of wisdom in a mundane trope,

duly to pigeonhole notes not to die.

October comes—antarctic spring, the march

of baleful academics in full swing—

the fledglings grow against the sense of farce;

they mind their manners, scrounge around and sing.

Nietzsche determines how birdbrains learn,

wallowing in this eternal return.

Sonnet No. 2

 
On Mother’s Day we spare few thoughts of

tiger moms or piglets garbed in orange and black.

Whatever zoos may do, we count on love,

then live, well fed, to parcel some love back.

Those piglets? Yes, they followed fate (if not

the butcher’s blade). The Thailand zoo made much

ado to make Siberian cubs from naught:

the tigress had to see the ruse, yet touched

each piglet as each touched her. Their shuffle

mattered not. She now had cubs, and they a mom.

Where were the dads in this whole kerfuffle?

Perhaps at war or endless… jobs… anon

and so we think of Mom, and blanket all the rest

in orange and black and trust that God provides the best.

Happy Mothers' Day, all creatures Great and Small: http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/t/tiger-pigs.htm

Sonnet No. 1

God grant whatever’s left to guinea pigs

of late. They seem to never grace themselves

with wisdom, though they contemplate the ways

of mortal days, and stare at books on shelves.

What chronicle we need is nothing to

propound.  Our little life (conjoined, alone)

is rounded with a slumber, then a sleep.

We eat and run, we bury extant bones.

Dear Ben in our backyard was showing Squeak

this fact: Squeak leapt at Pushkin’s grave and be-

yond our reach—he followed Pushkin’s fate. Then

his mother died, his brother sold, and we

are left with one last pig: Tanya, brown, male.

God grant that wiser days and prayer prevail.