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Sport 36: Winter 2008

Zoo

Zoo

after Zoo by Salla Tykkä, City Gallery Wellington

When I went to the zoo it was summer,
so yellow leaves did not lie like scabs
on the surface of the alligator's pool.

Crams of tourists in sensible shoes meant
I did not hear the clacking isolation of high heels
echoing around enclosures.

My Olympus camera and two rolls of film
did not render me weak through the tapering lens,
or prey to the brown fish-owl.

I measured myself against giraffes and the Kodiak bear
and did not hear Hitchcock's strings or imagine
wet limbs struggling through another's element.

My style was not symbolic of the tiger's remove.
Children ran, but could only scatter sparrows.

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