Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Along the sea front in an icy wind. The Isle of Wight Zoo hides inside the grey-walled ‘Granite Fort’. I show my ‘Animal Sponsor’ card to a young woman with a python round her neck who remarks, “He’s feeling affectionate today.” I decide on a quick coffee. It’s late April but the picnic area is deserted except for a young couple kissing, too taken with each other to feel the chill. Oblivious too, it seems, to events in the cage to their left.

young voices rising
  so delicate their fingers
    monkeys tight for fun

To the Big Cat enclosures. Mostly in pairs. Bengal tigers, jaguars, lions, an inexperienced panther trying to get frisky with a larger leopardess. Then Czar - my sponsored animal - and as usual he’s not easy to spot. But it’s strange how £20 a year has bonded me with this creature. One of a handful of surviving Chinese tigers, he’s alone today like me and probably taking the best part, asleep with feet in the air absorbing what cool sun is available. I’m wining him to see me... AS IF... he rolls over once, twitches and that’s it.

Some time ago on a similar day, it was Czar who touched my heart

born in captivity
we share sun-flecked rain
            young tiger

Towards the exit I stop to watch lemurs, for whom togetherness is a way of life, their huge worried eyes momentarily catching mine then turning inward to each other, as if burying themselves in fur could keep at bay this life of uncertainties.

   clasped together
lemurs, one light, one dark
   in a yin-yang ball

On my way out I pass the white door that says OPEN HERE TO SEE THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL. I do not open it.

colder in my ears
a gull’s cry torn from the wind
             sound of waves