~ from Jill

In honor of "National Poetry Month," I am posting this, a poem I wrote based on a unique field trip experience I had a few months ago:

Field Trip Chaperone; Palm Beach Zoo

It was the kind of day with air you swim through, pressure on the lungs, and I took my group – rather, they took me, away from the tribe of their classroom, and to a path through artificial mist. puddles on wet concrete, and animal tracks. They whooped and yelled, little animals themselves, and I followed the sounds.

First, to a pen full of strutting birds, One’s loose! a boy cried out, and then, Oh, no! unpeeled from the fence, covered in peacock waste, from over his heart to his arm stretched with rubber bracelets. We found a sink by the baby goats, and he washed and washed and washed. The other boys grinned, looking on, he had attained a kind of status. Please, I said, Look before you touch something, and nobody touch anything!

Let’s go this way! they shouted, and led me again, to the top of a deck. Looking out, we realized the bigger animals had moved, what remained in their place were birds, again, moving squarely on their feet like mini ice floes. Cool, they screamed, one leaning on the railing, then, Look what happened! ~ covered in ibis crap. This time it seemed non- accidental, the child in question was mine, but I quickly grabbed bottled water and some napkins, becoming a connoisseur of bird-droppings, and we went on moving.

It was near our time to leave, so we ran harder, past the unmanned carousel, across a rope bridge, and stumbled through the Mayan ruins. We have to find the bats, the lost boys screamed, We know they’re here! At last we saw a building, their grubby hands pulled me along inside. Instantly, the smell hit full-force, the stink of dung and sweaty bodies. The boys were undone, using the uneven walls to climb and peer closer at those creatures behind glass.

In the dark stench one of them breathed out three syllables, Ho-ly Shit! and I didn’t think to correct him. It was true, the day seemed to hold its own kind of light, not immediately apparent in the mess or the heat, but in those puddle soaked shoes, slapping ground as they ran, and the soaking in that kept them from remembering themselves, even enough to keep clean.