We set out for the zoo very early,

flash our passes at the gate guard

who nods a hello and waves us in.

The damp air is heavy with animal smells

and carries the sounds of awakening beasts.

Grunts, roars, birdcalls. Especially birdcalls,

since many of the birds are also early risers.

Crows and pigeons caw or coo a welcome as

we enter a wild yet mostly peaceable kingdom.

Tree talks to tree in a grove where the nesting

black-crowned night herons chirr like locusts.

Waddling duck pairs and ducklings

survey their domain, quacking loudly.

They have occupied the beaver pond whose

beleagured owners hunker down in the lodge,

wondering why the trespassers don't get evicted.

Peahen’s up, the cock sleeps on, his neck

curled around his body. No early riser he.

Stately flamingoes promenade elegantly. And squawk,

inelegantly. Kookaburra responds in his Aussie accent.

Lady cheetah, regally reclining upon a simulated savannah,

covets her neighbor the zebra. A Bactrian camel sheds its

fur in clumps; an agéd white Bengal tiger paces, slowly.

Two singing dogs take their daily constitutional escorted

by a handler, halting occasionally to yodel a virtuoso duet.

Envious wolves howl back in imperfect emulation.

Our pair of songsters spent millennia in

New Guinea perfecting their technique.

One of them kisses my palm.

Madame Panda wears a movie star smile,

a silent black-and-white movie star smile.

Ignoring her mate, she chews bamboo with

the gusto of someone who woke up famished.

She'll retire shortly for a nap.

Her sweet little cousins the red pandas,

too cute to exist, explore their habitat,

perpetually rediscovering its charms.

Above us, an orangutan dangles from

the cable linking his far-flung haunts.

Below, a silent battle rages. The prairie

dogs are gamely struggling to repulse

an invasion of rats seeking new digs.

We go down a path flanked by sagging pens, rusty

aviaries, empty cages so long abandoned whatever

creatures they once housed are surely extinct now.

Eventually the path starts to ascend Gibbon Ridge.

Despite being captives imprisoned in a wire

enclosure the gibbons remain defiantly free.

They swing from the walls to the rope to

the roof and back again with a fluid grace

over which gravity can claim no dominion.

The gibbons sing, perhaps less melodiously

than the dogs. Their choral efforts have been

descibed as "like Tarzan playing the bagpipes."

Twice daily their loud whoops resound

across the whole zoo and well beyond.

Zoologists consider these vocalizations

to be territorial displays warning other

species away from turf already taken.

The zoologists are wrong.

The morning song is both

a boast and an affirmation.

      We have survived another night.

      This day belongs to us by right.

The evening song is a vow.

Or perhaps merely a hope.

      This day was good and now it's over.

      But we will be here again tomorrow.

Perhaps a hope because the gibbons know

that living things must have a final sunset.

The white tiger is to be put down today at noon.

Within a week age will take the camel, and a predator

that sleepy peacock. The pandas' cute little cousins are

doomed to perish from a poison intended for those rats.

Soon you and I will be just me.

But the sun has risen on the gibbons this morning.

Herons chirr, ducklings paddle, an orangutan dangles,

and the two of us are here together celebrating the dawn.

                             ~