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A Book Of BeastsRoyal Rhodes2
Copyright 2021 by Red Wolf EditionsCover artwork: Adam Naming The Animals, etching by G. Scotin and J. Coleafter H. Gravelot and J. B. Chatelain, 1743No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoeverwithout written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied inarticles and reviews giving due credit to the authors.3
ContentsPart 1Whale 7Shark 8Part 2Hummingbird 10Part 3Raccoon 12Turtle 13Rat 14Kangaroo 15Skunk 16Spider 17Frog 18Ram 19Giraffe 20Cat 21Tiger 22Dog 23Polar Bear 24Snake 25Crocodile 26Elephant 27Hippopotamus 28Giraffe 29Zebra 30Camel 31Horse 32Pig 33Fox 34Gorilla 35Part 4The True Zoo 37About the author 384
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you,or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,or let the fish in the sea inform you.Which of all these does not knowthat the hand of the Lord has done this?”Book of Job 12:7-95
PART 1“.Let the waters bring forth swarmsof living creatures.”6
WHALE“.and I only am escaped aloneto tell thee.” – Book of JobThe whale road stretched around the Capewhere some, the sick ones, time to time would beach.Abrasive tides had pushed the sand to shapea hook, Land’s End, that only swimmers reach.The “Dolphin” carried tourists out for milesto watch such beings break the waterlineand dive again in acrobatic styles,while each filled with krill and spouted brine.They dreamt about black ships and harpoon boats– the slick of blood that foamed upon the waves,the stuff of songs that filled their open throats,as hunters and the hunted found their graves.They grasped an ancient wisdom held from mewhen long ago they walked into the sea.7
SHARK“Bertha, New York Aquarium’s Oldest Shark, Is Dead.”“.we knew that it was time,” Hans Walters,supervisor of sharks (4/1/08)Bertha, dead – or rather – euthanisedat 43, was New York’s oldest shark.Biologists at Coney Island criedfor her, whose bite we know outmatched her bark.They had to put her down like some dear petwho fishermen had netted for this tankand yet whose records all had gotten wetwith water not one city-dweller drank.She dined at large on shoals of schooling fish,perhaps like squamous cells internallythat feed on me, who feared a Great White’s dishto furnish fathoms down beneath the sea.Migration ended, not one off-spring bred.Pray for Bertha. Pray for all the dead.8
PART 2“.Let birds fly above the earth acrossthe firmament of the heavens.”9
HUMMINGBIRD“But He, the best Logician,Refers my clumsy eye – ’’– Emily DickinsonThey were dead, behind museum glass.Metallic iridescence later paintedon throats and wings, a trick to make them passfor living things. I very nearly faintedthe first I heard a marathon of hummingat a feeder, hovering. Its wingsbeating backwards with its heart-rate comingclose to mine. It captured flying thingsand drank the nectar that deep-throated flowershid, and used its darting tongue to enterall that languid loveliness for hours,and made me feel my body at its center.A startling end will cap this simple story.Before our eyes – just look! A morning-glory.10
PART 3“.Let the earth bring forth livingcreatures according to their kind.”11
RACCOON“Raccoons do not eat cats or dogs.”– WikipediaMoonlight silvers everything I saw –a raccoon matriarch whose cub was hitalong the highway edge had raised her pawto poke the body twice and wait a bitbefore she turned and vanished in the corn.The crows would spend the coming day to fightfor bits of these that look like they were bornwith bandit eyes whose rings were black as night.The fields around my rural house were thickwith life. At dusk raccoons will come to feedon scraps and freeze, if I might quickly flickthe porchlight once and catch them in the deed.The neighbor’s Beagles ran them up a tree,but something in us likes their banditry.12
TURTLE“All the thoughts ofa turtle are turtle.”– Ralph Waldo EmersonThey look like denizens of lost Atlantis,wrinkled necks and callused, brittle shellsin which the head can vanish like a mantispraying as it mates and heads to hell.Like us, their self is thickly carapaced,so predators resort to dropping rocks,as with the bald philosopher who facedhis death when birds mistook his skull. It mocksthe turtle's slowness in the reasoned mind,amphibian in choosing life on landand water both, when logic – cold and blind –will deal the same to all with sleight of hand.We race the turtle to our finish. Thereour steady pace will triumph by a hair.13
RAT“I could no more define poetrythan a terrier can define a rat.”– A.E.HousmanBeneath the shaky walls of culture, jawsare working: roaches, termites, and the kingof mischief – teeth so busy eating, clawsthat pick from our buffet of trash the thingwe bit and threw away. Such food the ratwill treasure, like the beggar at the curbwho held a sign whose words were like a gnatof conscience: “Is humanity a verb?My test of kindness.” Or are we so blind?The rat, an outline in a zen-like moon,fled the hamlet, we should call to mind,and then the children danced to that same tune.We use in labs the rats that make us cringe,and then dispatch them with a sweet syringe.14
KANGAROO“And who so happy, O who/ Asthe Duck and the Kangaroo.”– Edward LearThe land of OZ, a wondrous place down under,shelters many kinds of kangaroo.Their bodies seem an engineering blunder,not as Intelligent Design would do.The duck-billed platypus, koala, dingo –figures of the dream time lope and crouchwith Mother Kangaroo – in Aussie lingo –escaping and returning to her pouch.The kookaburra boomerangs its sound,and barrier reefs convene the Great White sharks.The kangaroo still bounces on the ground,as if the earth were roseate with sparks.The creature that we think bizarre and odd,creating awe, no odder is than God.15
SKUNK“I myself am hell.”– Robert Lowell, “Skunk Hour”He waddled, vested as a solemn preacher.His head, proportioned like a sugar scoop,poked about. Our dog, before we reach her,barks and runs to guard the chicken coop,and feels the claws and stink. Her courage flutters,fails, collapses, as we run to help.Our home with chalk-white walls and coal-black shutters,reverberates with every sickened yelp.This shadow lived here long before we came,the place in which we thought we were the heirs.Its owners from now on will have a namenot ours, and they will oversee repairs.The house needs painters, carpenters, and plumbersthis summer's day, the last of all our summers.16
SPIDER“I have drunk, and seen the spider.”– William Shakespeare, The Winter’s TaleAriadne’s string resolved a mazeand saved a hero that abandoned herwho gave herself to Bacchus in a daze.With venom, dosed in nano-integer,another weaver spins, a glossy blackarachnid crafts a web and upside downdeposits eggs within a silken sac,and eats, they say, her mate who’s colored brown.Her midriff’s hour-glass of red is signof poison, warning predators of death.The symptoms: arid mouth and sweating spine,swollen eyelids, gasps, a final breath.Resistant to insecticides it movesin fatal ways like those who were my loves.17
FROG“furu-ike yakawazu tobi-kamuMizu-no-oto.”– BashoWe gasped the day they rained down from the sky –but not melodious toads, just floods of frogs,an omen ranked with one that pigs can flyor claims that it is raining cats and of dogs.Fat bodies, bulging eyes, they hit the ground,“frog hands,” like leaves or moss upon the stones,like polliwogs, emitting each a sound –a feast on flies, young crickets, even bonesof birdlings on forest floor, a riverof toxins from their skin, the color blue,yellow. red, that male their victims shiverand vomit, while the body changes hue.Out of Hell emerges through the cracks,a chorus of “BREK-KEK-KOAX-KOAX.”18
RAM“So Abraham returned to his young men.”– Genesis 22:19Forget the Golden Fleece, the murdered child,Medea's madness, all the yarns of Greece.There is nothing mythic in this wildterrain of dust, where death’s the only peace.A stumbling ram with matted, clotted wooland rigid horns, ionic curls, was caughtin thorn and brushwood as he tried to pullaway and find the food or mate he sought.Two figures trudged across this lonely hill,a man of age, whose hand caressed a knife.beside a youth who asked what would they kill,and bind it naked while they took its life.The ram and boy as sacrifice are paired.Despite what has been said, the ram was spared.19
THE GOLDEN ASS“I grabbed that crown.red-flashingroses.with my greedy mouth.”– Lucius ApuleiusA mantic Mozart played a bit of magicto show Masonic rites. Euripidesunveiled a Dionysus, wild and tragic.And Apuleius bared the Mysteries.His book, “Asinus Aureus,” as Austincalled it, ended with the charms of Isis,but showed an underworld his soul is lost in,cranky, cruel, and cursed, a realm of crisis,where forbidden knowledge, formed by passion,left-hand magic, mulish, stubborn sex,needs no stimulants, as is our fashion,whose organs, eunuchs know, are bound to vex.Shakespeare’s Bottom brayed to coax a kiss,so well a goddess thought it was sheer bliss.20
CAT“I am the catwho has feathersunder its tongue.”– Mary OliverIt came unbidden to inspect the litterbox I raked, and then the dinner plate.This household cat acknowledged me, the sitter,long enough to mark its turf. It atethe cup of bits with predatory hunchof shoulders. And its tail, a magic wand,warned me to keep my distance. Every crunchsounded like a songbird’s death. Its bondin killing with the feral cat I fed,to please a friend, was sealed in violence.At Abydos they mummified their deadcats, like these, possessed with darker sense.Cats in moonlight stare with milky eyesand, spies in some deception, wait to rise.21
TIGER: a Buddhist version“.what art/Could twist the sinewsof thy heart?” – William BlakeWhat is the tiger, when all our body’s burning,tongue and touch? A hothouse mangrove stand,the biting saw-tooth grass, the bamboo turninggreen, the jungle stubble, and a bandof chanting monkeys where the trees are bent.It all is found in death’s felicity,the piercing rain, the tantalizing scent.The poet’s fiction sees this symmetry.If you embrace the dread, the heart will know.Only a mortal hand or eye could traceand hold such rare ones close, and let them go,while deadly terror shows its holy face.The Monkey – greed; the Tiger – sign of ire;the Deer – lovesickness. And the eye is fire.22
DOG“.only a dog fed from the table.”– The Odyssey, Book XVIIMastiffs, greyhounds, spaniels, breeds that mixblood, the pampered and those tossed the crumbs,the scavenger on battlefields that licksthe decomposing dead as terror numbsthe dying. When Ulysses saw his houndtoo weak to rise (the beast pricks up his ears,drums his tail, and dies upon that ground)the “dogs” inside were killed with fewer tears.A dog is nature that we break and master,our sense of god, a dog domesticated,we try to tame “in fortune and disaster,”although the dogs of war are never sated.So many deaths would make a mongrel growl,and we will howl and howl and howl and howl.23
POLAR BEAR“You didn’t hear about thepolar bear?” – Charlie on “Lost”The unthinkable exists in what we think.Like reason, an ice shelf’s made a broken floe.Tessellated, hard-pack blocks that linkthe polar bears, who eat and wash, will goadrift. The white, translucent outer hairthese hunters wear is deadlier at night.The “leap of faith” for us, not them, is rare.Their niche is shrinking, pushed by human blight.The native tongues have countless words for snowin which the polar bears so slowly move.Warming makes it melt and flood, we know.(Oh, why do we have fewer words for love?)The sea is rising. All our future ends,when great white bears will swim where Broadway bends.24
SNAKE“.I missed my chance with oneof the lords of life” – D.H. LawrenceA poet, housed below the open mouthof a dead volcano stretching skyward, upto flattened clouds that drifted toward the South,beheld a snake that licked his water cup.The sun-dried land had caused each one to thirst.The torpid human – like the slackened torquethe snake displayed – relaxed, despite the firstfeelings as the sliver tongue – a fork –darted from the jaw. The hue of blackis harmless. Golden ones are deadly – senseof this inborn. But would these words come back?Would it speak, as wise as innocence?Truth will come. We only have to will it.As for the snake – we know enough to kill it.25
CROCODILE“.his sympathies were with theclassical rather than the modern.”– J.M. Barrie, Hook at EtonWith boney back, web feet, and scales with pores,a tongue with glands to filter salt, a tastefor vertebrates, a V-shaped head that storesteeth to rip, then swallow whole in hastethe prey it ambushed, prowls this brackish water.Its odd, four-chambered heart is filled with coldblood. It gladly slaughters what we slaughter,and sleeps with open mouth, as we do – oldand ageless – belly down on tidal banks.The Captain spoke and pressed his iron hookagainst me, while the crocodile gave thanks.The Lost Boys yielded, panicked by its look.“This final Friend will come for all of us.In silence we will go with no more fuss.”26
ELEPHANT“The Indian elephant is said sometimes to weep.”– Charles Darwin“This animal,” one said, “must be a fan,flat and flapping.” Another said, “A wall,”while he touched it, “wider than a span.”“A branch of trees”, or “solid plough to maulthe earth,” when others felt the trunk and tusk.The leg – “a pillar”, tail – “a whip of rope.”The sightless used their palms, and gave a bruskreading of the elephant to copewith ignorance. But others chained these creaturesfor worship, work, and war, the rocking, swayingthrone of kings, while Barnum’s Jumbo featuresvirtues in its death that seemed like praying.Self-aware in mirrors, they regretwhat we, unlike the elephants, forget.27
HIPPOPOTAMUS“.there is a hippopotamus in methat wants to wallow in the mud.”– Carl SandburgA bloated hippo rides the flooding Nilethrough crocodiles and birds with reed-thin beaks.The one who made Leviathan must smilebeholding this Behemoth. When it speaksit bellows. Below the surface, giving birth,it kicks its legs in wild ballet. On shoreits sweat is oily red and coats its girthlike blood. It pokes about the river floor,with ears and nostrils made for breathing longersubmerged. But once upon a wet savannaa poet said it rose – though death is stronger /and sang, in martyrs’ arms, a hoarse hosanna.The last exterminating angels perch,as river horses float above this Church.28
GIRAFFE“God is really only another artist.He invented the giraffe.”– Pablo PicassoAn African midrash: savanna land, vastand empty, except for a column of burning light.Closer it looked like a limbless tree. At lastI saw a gawky giraffe with its neck upright,sheathed with golden skin and irregular patches,its heart high above its skinny knees.It chewed acacia with lips that ignore the scratchesof thorn, its lolling tongue probes and freesobjects for pleasure or food. It duels with its neck,bobbing its horn-tipped head like a massive club.But the same behaviors a bull will use to wrecka rival are used to mount and gently rub.The day you cracked your neck, the midrash giraffewe saw was you, and seeing made us laugh.29
ZEBRA“.on the screen a grainy lion/brought a grainy zebra down.”– Albert GoldbarthThey wear pyjamas striped in shade and light –prisoners of our imagination –ordinary horses, yet not quite,with graphic skin of white and black striation.Centaurs, unicorns, and flying horsesare dreams, but these are possible to ride.Like us they wear some camouflage while forceshunt them, shrinking herds that can not hide.The striding lion picks the young and weak,but color-blind becomes confused. The grasswill shield adults and foals from those that seekthis grazer, Portuguese for “untamed ass”.The Zebra’s made decor with just one slug –a pricey New York penthouse scatter rug.30
CAMEL“.strain at a gnat, andswallow a camel.” – Matthew 23Like ships upon a wave of dunes, they filein caravans, more useful than the wheelthat sinks and more efficient mile for mile.We load their humped backs as they groan and kneel,and tread the Silk Road, steppe, and sunlit prairie,such guzzling “gifts of God”. Their hooves are split,they wander far; their milk and meat and hairycoat that moults in Spring are gifts. They spitin fear and anger. Membranes shield their eyes,and long eye-lashes guard from dust and light.The wasteland and the wasteland’s God surpriseus with a beast that redesigns delight.The sands they walk, like us, will leave no traces.And what we long for is such desert places.31
HORSE“When I bestride him I soar.”-- William Shakespeare, Henry VTalking horses, those on mythic wing,the breeds we ride and race to sudden death,that snort and cry “Aha” when trumpets ringfor battle, swifter than a single breath.And these – from foal and yearling – grow in course,their height in hands, and canter, gallop, trot.The kitchen at the Harvard club served “Horse”,whose mouths were bloodied by the bit, and notthe hot-blood breeds that seem to ride the sky.Pale horse, pale rider look ahead and back,'though only ostrich have a larger eye –this seventh sign in Asia’s zodiac.I ride hard naked, while the flying manewhips me, purging me with ghostly pain.32
PIG“(The pig) hath a fair sepulchre/ in the gratefulstomach of the judicious epicure.” – Charles LambHiggle-and-Jiggle, our verses will praise the pig,their snout, their squinty eyes, and corkscrew tail.Gluttons, foraging for truffles, digthis buried gold. Demeter’s pet, whose trailwill jog from home to market, eats its youngwhen stressed, as starving wolves surround its door.They carry trichinosis and a lungdisease, and sages tell of filth galore.But pigs that dance, that shuffle, tap, and strutwhile ragtime plays, live high upon the hog.Vivacious, fertile swine who love to rutand roll in mud or sleeping like a log.The Lord of Flies and Legion, daubed with grease,had drowned, we thought. But pain can never cease.33
FOX“A fox is a wolf who sends flowers.”– Ruth WestonStory-tellers put a cunning tongueinto the fox’s mouth – our wily friend –quick-witted, deceiving old and young,and jumping lazy dogs, while chickens sendthemselves in circles as the sky is falling.The local gentry mount and ride to hounds.But is the fox or hunter more appalling?If we knew just how to leap the boundsdividing species, what vocabularyserves to ask the fox its deep desire,how it hungered, what it thought was scary,when its captors set its tail on fire.What key exists that craftily unlocksthe words I seek, translating them to fox?34
GORILLA“I feel more comfortable with gorillasthan people.they’re purely motivated.”– Dian FosseyThe silverbacks are singing in the mist,the ones who group in troops among the cloudof mountain forests, walking with the twistof knuckles and smooth feet. They roar out loud,baring canine teeth, when poachers huntfor bushmeat or for trophy heads. Their hairis darkest, thickest down across their front.Now viruses have made the species rare.Our sleeping nests, like theirs, give rise to dreamsabout Skull Island’s giant, lonely king,obsessed, whose courting ends in piercing screams,and scaling to the clouds he feels their sting.Love is sacrifice that never halts.Beauty killed the beast for all our faults.35
PART 4“.Let us make man.”36
THE TRUE ZOO“Zoo animals have been known to diefrom stares.” – Igor StravinskyLike the characters in Fabliaux,we re-invent ourselves with totem masks,animals and spirits, howling lowin packs whose instincts push our bloody tasks.The post-apocalyptic future’s soulsare not the wild things, prisoners of birth,“red in tooth and claw” in caves and holes,but us, who made a killing ground of earth,who murder, then will ask: Remember me?Who else will drain a thousand splendid suns,and empty towns, and vaporize the sea?Except in joking, when did beasts bear guns?We’ll leave no one to place the funeral wreath,when we are bread between the lion’s teeth.37
About the AuthorRoyal Rhodes taught global religions, literature, and death & dying classes for 40years at Kenyon College. His poems have appeared in The Montreal Review,Ariel Chart, Dreich, and Halcyon Days Magazine, besides in other literaryjournals online and in print. He has done several art/poetry collaborations withThe Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press in North Carolina. Another recent project wasa poetry and art exhibition entitled The Art of Trees.38
in thorn and brushwood as he tried to pull away and find the food or mate he sought. Two figures trudged across this lonely hill, a man of age, whose hand caressed a knife. beside a youth who asked what would they kill, and bind it naked while they took its life. The ram and boy as sacrific
