Sally Clark
Luck of the draw
Toughened glass encased in curving concrete
Has replaced iron bars.
I half expect a connecting phone,
So that we can sit, opposite,
And each place one free hand on the glass
To fit the shape of the other.
But you are engrossed in tracing the tread of a tyre
With your giant delicate fingernail
Your upward glance, the look you wear
If I knew my life was mine and everyone else’s
But for a blink of DNA
It might not have been your hand
That became an ashtray.
Scales, claws or a prehensile tail.
Finding the animal in you would make me less ashamed
Than those small, expansive human eyes.
I turn away from the one animal in the zoo
Who might have been capable of changing the wheel.
Page(s) 38
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