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Catherine’s Animals
Jeffrey DeLotto

And I plunged into my daughter’s room,
Fledging sanctum sanctorum, and her
Breath caught in surprise, she, sitting
Gandhi-like on her plush ivory carpet,
Leaning over a vast surround of hardwood
Floor, with waves of childhood animals,
Two hard plastic tigers shoulder to shoulder,
Less than two inches tall, sheep, skunks,
Shuffling bears black and brown, chickens
Big as panthers, all in regimented rows,
Getting along, making ready to step onto
Some ark or circus train, and her uplifted
Eyes, days before her fourteenth birthday,
Seeming to blink imaged worlds away,
Stared like a doe’s on the highway’s
Verge, or a girl’s at the garden’s gate.

—
Jeffrey DeLotto, Professor Emeritus in English, has taught writing and British literature at Texas Wesleyan University, Irbid University (in Jordan), and the University of Plovdiv in Bulgaria. His poems, essays, and stories have appeared in numerous magazines, journals, and anthologies, and he has published Voices at the Door (the Southwest Poets Series winner), Days of a Chameleon: Collected Poems, Voices Writ in Sand: Dramatic Monologues and Other Poems, The Abscission Zone: Collected Poems, as well as A Caddo’s Way (a historical novel). He is currently putting together a collection of his hitch-hiking poems.

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