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.