Jane’s Animals



My shoes clap like a baby’s hands

as I enter the new house. In San Diego

we never had wooden floors and

rows of green, summer foliage

flapping against my bedroom window. 



I think about writing a poem as I

leaf out of my room to the humidity 

of corridor air, like rolling head-

first down the stairs. 



The knob to the attic is cold and

wet. Inside, Jane’s dusty horses

glare at me with tired, fusty eyes;

they’re begging for mercy, for freedom,

for Jane, locked inside their cage. I 

look out the window: it’s raining,

and the towers of New York are corned

in black clouds. 



Those horses and bears and dogs don’t 

know what’s outside, don’t know how 

good their lives are. In cool, crisp mornings,

I wake up to the azure shadows of dawn. They

don’t seem to care that the sun always

rises on them first, sets on them

last.