On a visit to the jungle/zoo (kind of)

I wonder if, in the mundane of lunch breaks and star market coupons, people know the magnitude of their influence.

A couple of weeks ago, after debating whether I should bother after a long workday, I ended up attending a writing workshop. A free-write time for poetry, it was awesome. After ruining the sublime atmosphere the instructor had set by barging in late, I read a line from a poem that really touched my heart.

“Grace” by Joy Harjo, in which my favorite lines were;

The haunting voices of the starved and mutilated broke fences, crashed our thermostat dreams, and we couldn’t stand it one more time. So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory, walked through cheap apartment walls, skated through fields of ghosts into a town that never wanted us, in the epic search for grace.

I’ve always loved the beauty of words, what new ones you can happen upon in a thesaurus and pretend you’ve known for years. But mostly, I enjoyed the vivid feeling of these lines, and it inspired my own during our free-write time.

The Jungle poem was written for my loved one and their time in the steamy wilderness of Blanc which they endured.

………………………………………..

Recently, I have been thinking about the zoo and your unexpected trip there, especially since you have never been the spontaneous type.

The translucent snakes that wrapped around your body.

A blood thirsty cobra gripped your throat, and a garden snake at your nose that poisoned you with O2.

Their hisses were ominous but not like the slow, almost peaceful whispers of snakes on Nat geo or like tea kettles reaching climax.

More like a creeping whisper, to the pace of pre-war apartment buzzers or sympathy claps begging for early show endings.

I remember then how much you hated the zoo. Maybe scared you’d be a lost cry in the faux bird calls that filled that stale jungle.

Perhaps you felt pity for their encampment and after spending time with them realized you too felt like an exhibit.

I wish I could tell you that even if people saw your resemblance in the panther’s roars and your booming voice, they would never be an exhibition that could hold the uniqueness of your being.

Happiest Saturday / Juneteenth