Monday, November 17, 2008

Boy at the zoo


Boy at the Zoo,
you feed a peanut to an Elephant
through the wrought iron fence;
she graciously scoops it from your palm.

Peanut! Pea nut!
Nuts! Nuts! I think.
Will you discover later,
how devastating the world is,
and why the fence grows higher still?

The Sun glints and pokes my eye,
and I move on to the monkey enclosure.

4 comments:

Dave King said...

I found this a charming poem with somewhat hidden depths. The change to first person in the last verse was exactly right, I thought.

Hugh McMillan said...

I really like this colin. You write a lot of 'glimpses' like this and the reader is always left with a feeling that something totally profound's been said but they're not entirely sure what. It's like a shunt to the imagination.

McGuire said...

I like the idea of 'glimpses'. But do you think it is simply that the reading is missing something because 'I haven't said anything'.

I like this minimalist style. I can see similarities between this poem and charls simic.

Glad you're reading, Shug. Much more to come from me.

The Brokendown Barman said...

think a lot of your poems are, as shug put it, glimpses, or maybe even pictures of a moment. very reminicsent of certain simon and garfunkle songs, eg. america bookends and the boxer, which always seem to me to capture a very specific moment. very narrow in subject matter. hope this makes sense, it does to me and is meant to be a good thing!!!!