WEBVTT

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There are many poets who have
written poems that take place

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in or are about zoos.

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This is my entry.

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At one time, my wife and I
lived on 2 acres in the country,

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and we had an orchard.

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And when all these trees came
full with fruit, we had plums,

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we had apples, we
had pears, we had

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all sorts of things that we
didn't recognize, really,

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and they all came ripe at once.

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And being unaccustomed
to this, we

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had a large windfall and
all kinds of bad things left

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and we were at a
loss of what to do.

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We went to the zoo with some.

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I found myself there at that
time in a very awkward position

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and had a sudden
startling realization

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that I was taking part in
a kind of timeless event

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that had occurred first in
another zoological garden,

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the first long, long ago.

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And I wrote this poem called
"The Fruit Of The Tree."

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"With a wall and a
ditch between us,

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I watched the gate
legged dromedary

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creak open from her sleep
and come headfirst toward me

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as I held out three rust mottled
tough pears the color of camel.

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When I tossed one, she
made no move to catch it.

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Whatever they eat lies
still and can wait.

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The roots and sticks, the
scrag ends of brambles.

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She straddled, dipping her neck.

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Gray lips and
lavender tongue which

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can choose the best of thorns,
thrusts the pear to her gullet.

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Choking, she mouthed it,
her ruminating jaw flung up,

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her eyes lashed out.

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With a groan, she
thrust it down.

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And ecstasy swept her
down into the ditch

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till her chin and her pointed
prolonged face sat on the wall.

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She stared at me, inventor
and founder of pears.

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I emptied my sack.

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She ate them painfully,
clumsy with joy.

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Her withers trembling,
careless of dust on the bitten

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and dropped half, ignoring
flies, losing herself

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in the pit of her last stomach.

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When she gazed at me again,
our mouths were both deserted.

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I walked away with myself.

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She watched me disappear,
then with a rippling trudge,

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went back to her
stable to snort,

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to browse on hay, to
remember my sack forever.

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She'd been used to having no
pears, but hadn't known it.

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Imagine the hostile runners, the
biters of burnouses, coughers

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and spitters whose legs
can kick at amazing angles.

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Their single hump would
carry us willingly over dunes

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through sand storms
and the swirling djinn

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to the edges of oases if
they, from their waterless,

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intractable hearts might
stretch for pears."

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[APPLAUSE]

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