Zoo in November
Kristin Van Tassel
A jungle house mouth exhales
the humid paradise we grafted
onto our dry grass prairie.
Fruit bats fold and unfold their wings, oblivious
as this hemisphere rolls away from its sun
into winter. Spotted rays overlap like dark pancakes
in warm pools.
The macaw flies, a fantastic optic spangle –
and the scarlet ibis, in luminous splash, its beak a jet fountain
arc – such shape and color no native birdwatcher
would ever take for true.
Elephant shrews wave one-inch trunks
in wordless incantation, snout wands tapping
against their tunnels, portals from the visible.
Outside, peccaries have arrived from planet
elsewhere—their pig noses adhere to bison-head
busts, covered with a gray quill carpet, perched atop
deer legs slender as cattails.
We live as exotic creatures, too, our survival
propped up against scaffolding thinner than
a peccary hoof. A million years from our birth,
we fancy ourselves keepers
of the magic.
Kristin Van Tassel lives and teaches in rural Central Kansas. She writes essays and poetry about place, travel, and teaching. Her work has appeared in Wraparound South, World Hum, Wanderlust, Capsule Stories, Temenos, Whale Watch Review, The Land Report, and About Place.