Janis Freegard
Gator
in the gardens of New
York, for instance, or cantering down the
highway at 27 kilometres per hour,
sharpening their teeth I have seen them –
360 kilos if they’re a gram – sunning their
albino skin among the flowers I have
watched them rake and sow outside gazebos,
fertilising the fruit-cake earth, digging in
at night they tend the sewers
many have opened restaurants
near their nests fine chefs, too, they are,
known especially for their baking: brioches
au sucre, tantalising tartelettes, delivered to
your table with a capacious grin no one
makes a pecan pie quite the way they
do . . . spreading them out for the young to
crack on through at hatching time
a tour guide in
the Everglades told me how he’d come across
them one night, a large group near the
river at first he thought it was an elaborate
courtship display or a ritualised battle it
soon became clear, though, that this was
some form of circus he recalled them
clambering on to each other’s backs until
they formed a primitive pyramid it’s only
a matter of time before they try the high
wire, he said watch out then