The Zoo
A Poem About Hopelessness
We skipped class to go to
A climate strike
Crystals of dew, wet with morning
Squelched under our shoes
We missed our bus and laughed as we jay-
Walked across a river of grey and brown —
As pink-eyed creatures with rubber wheels
Honked at us, snarled with smoky tongues
The clouds were like cotton candy fingernails, caught
On the fabric of the sky — downtown
Swelled with the chants, the bubbling
Breaths of climate activists: my fingers were
Wreathed in September cold —
The crowd swam around me
Threading, knotting, weaving
Like a long, pale root tunneling
Into the soil —
I imagined all the plastic
We pile in blue recycling boxes
Zoos of polyethylene
Elephants with trunks of accordion straws
Walmart bag jellyfish ballooning, bobbing on waves
Turtles scuttling along with yogurt boxes for shells
Toads with bottle-cap warts
My tongue stumbles over the protest chants
The rhymes stick in the hollows of my gums
I almost cry when the crowd draws up tight around me
Pursing its great, gnashing lips until I am
Almost sucked up into its tongue —
Almost sucked up in the hope that
Something can change
And now we’re going home
And I feel good about myself
As though something is — different —
As though something has — changed —
As though I’m not a zookeeper
With crinkling, crackling water bottles for lungs
My intestines ringed with plastic
As though my breath isn’t heavy as tar —
As though my footprint doesn’t leave dents
In the earth when I walk it
As though we changed
Something
And maybe we could have,
If we didn’t feel so alone.
And maybe we will —
If we keep trying.
Maybe we can
If we keep going.
