print previewback ALISON TOWNSEND
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
for you in the 1950s the books she read aloud
line your shelves The Wind in the Willows, Rascal,
Ring of Bright Water, The Incredible Journey pages
turning slowly as your eyes closed and always the shape
of her fingers stroking a cat or dog the bay gelding you learned
to ride at nine her grief when a weasel broke into the duck coop
the drake she loved best cradled in her arms blood on her
gray coat though she killed a copperhead one summer
an ax chopped through its body when it reared up
where you played her tears on your arm hot as the day
a blue pickup hit your pup’s sister he never even stopped
she said he never even together you buried
the puppy wrapped in blue calico you and your siblings’ hands
tucked in hers on the way back to the house where she fed
cheddar cheese to the cellar rat she’d befriended
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 
Emily Dickinson’s Maid Remembers
The Zoologist’s Daughter