The Zoologist’s Daughter

I

Because animals were always there you can’t

remember a time without them your mother’s

hand lifting yours to the ginger cat’s soft fur then her whistle

     calling bluebirds fans of gold seed birds with sky

on their shoulders their name your first word it flew

above a row of stuffed animals her childhood Scottie

and panda lined up in the crib by the window where you

     watched the Perkiomen Creek waterway of your life

run beside the old house and always cats nearby

names etched in your brain sixty years later Sammy, Talky

Boy, Susie and Grey-boy who turned out to be a girl

     every one given away when you caught cat scratch

fever you did not see her cry

At Wild Run Farm pheasant eggs the dogs brought in

tucked beneath her chickens just in case box turtles

rescued from the road see how they like raw hamburger

     guinea pigs that squealed for green beans white mice saved

from your father’s lab at Christmas a family of rubber

animals for your dollhouse an antique farm under the tree

donkey with the nodding head her favorite and yours

one birthday a Dutch rabbit brown and white fur like down

     the warm fustiness of the hen house her brood of murmuring

Rhode Island Reds you followed her saying here

chick, chick, chick cracked corn falling gold from your hands

one yellow ball of fluff a rooster named John

rode on your shoulder another with a blocked crop she

     cut open could not save black stitches threading its throat

like those you’d glimpse on her breast a few years later

In summer you caught fireflies tiny lamps flickering

beside your bed Mason jar houses of twigs and leaves

     you were told you must always empty by morning

empathy the palm that cradles another then opens

though she never mentioned the word just said look

     polliwogs in the pond at your grandmother’s farm

a few taken home to your aquarium to watch grow legs

changing into small jade frogs gone one day when

you were at school she’d released them you realize now

see how the world works, she said tilting your face to the sky

see how the geese return in the spring and the robins

how the tadpole becomes the frog how we die then live

II

Years after her death your father remembered

her saying I knew she’d pick the shy one when you

chose corgi-beagle mutt you’d have

till you were twenty your palms beating a soft tattoo

on the braided rug here pup, pup, pup you sometimes

hear short legs running behind you still even as you

     grieve the collies lost in your middle age you page

through faded Golden Field Guides a new one every year

given for birthdays corners turned down to mark

the names mourning cloak, killdeer, leopard frog,

white-footed field mouse she handed you her binoculars

to watch the birds up close one spring even a child’s microscope

     like hers in photos drops of pond water teeming her college slides

filed in slotted cases packed away in the attic with her texts

what she might have been besides mother traded happily

What to make of it all Rachel Carson her heroine

dying of the same disease at the same time testifying

     before Congress Carson’s books about the sea piled

on your mother’s desk beside a statue of Saint Francis she’d begun carving

a new bird feeder she meant to set up before she got too sick

     black stitches turned into shiny scars her bright body fading

graying gone and forever the memory of her hand

lifting yours to that tabby’s ginger plush this is how we

     the gesture alive again a red dragonfly

landing in your palm as you sit beside your cat’s grave

in honeyed September the silvery thrum of field crickets

nothing to do with you but everything