LARRY LEVIS

The Zoo

Today is my day off, so I go to the zoo. After a while though, the animals, dappled like weak shade beneath an oak tree, begin to make me feel tired, as if I was looking at them across a great distance, a plain. It is as if I have to catch up with someone I don’t like, but he is the only one who can show me the way down from a mountain where there is no water. I have followed a small snow leopard up here for hours, and now everything around me, the formations of rocks and the dry brush, look like snow leopards, or, for some reason, have the poise of snow leopards. The animal I was hunting must be miles away by now.

But what I wanted to tell you about was the zoo. The way the hyenas are sold without ever knowing it, and, later, overhead, the right stars in the right places.