I’m watching Madagascar
with the boys—hilarious
hip city zoo animals end up
in Africa but long to come
home to the Central Park Zoo.
With the emergence of zoos,
pet keeping and animal toys,
John Berger explains that animals
were slowly disappearing from
our daily lives. When the boys
take a bath, Luke stretches his
long young thin body under
the warm water and we play
with little action figures
and plastic frogs. Then I put
my feet into the tub, singing
row row row your boat gently
down the stream. Later
it’s raining and we’re together
under an umbrella, walking
through the park. Surely,
radioactive ocean water
from the Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear plant will migrate
around the globe and even if we
don’t die this year, we will
all die eventually, so for now,
let’s hold each other loosely.
From A Day Like Today (Negative Capability Press, 2015) by Barbara Henning © 2015.