cutting great neck

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.