WOODEN ZOO

I recall when you arrived

six months old in your pram

and your parents so young,

says Dorothy at the gate.

A daughter lost to cancer,

the oldest son a heart attack

climbing up a mountain.

 

He came to play with us

just once, back then

and we sniggered at his

peculiar way of talking

and wouldn't let him touch

the wooden zoo I owned

that held my plastic animals.

 

The other son on Sundays

parks a car, she opens the door.

My broken zoo's discarded

in a dusty corner of the garage

under its patina of grime.

I'll use it as a home for plants

when I move house, I say.

 

The poem appears not to have a watertight narrative. The connection between the unfortunate family across the street and the wooden zoo is tenuous and incidental. Loose threads are not really tied up in the final stanza either. But does a poem have to 'make sense' in the conventional way in order to convey something worthwhile? Perhaps the lack of closure creates a certain mystery.