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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
CLOSING TIME AT THE SAN DIEGO ZOO, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: The keepers / walk among galapagos turtles Last Line: In the san diego dusk. Subject(s): Caregivers; Galapagos Islands; Turtles; Zoos; Tortoises | |||
The keepers walk among Galapagos turtles, pummel their domed backs with short sticks in twilight at this furthest edge of America and herd them to their cement-block shelter. Looking like World War II helmets, abandoned after a battle on the grass, they wear white numbers on their backs neat as license plates - 5, 16, 21 - these who once could not be numbered. A keeper's rapping brings out an old man's neck, the skin hanging in loose folds, brings out a beaked head naked as a baby bird's, magnified terribly by those enormous eyes. And in that skull hard as a hazel shell, years are not numbered by the names of cities or made things like religions or wars. Memory is the abrasion of rock and sea, the rub of the two hands of earth's time. The last one locked in its shelter, we flock to our licensed shells - our headlight tunneling the distance of our vision in the San Diego dusk. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...GIANT TORTOISE by ANTHONY HECHT THE TURTLE SHRINE NEAR CHITTAGONG by NAOMI SHIHAB NYE THE PHOENIX AND THE TORTOISE by KENNETH REXROTH TO A BOX TURTLE by JOHN UPDIKE A JOURNEY WITH WOMEN by ROBERT BLY |
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