Zoo Keeping

Photo by Joe Stephenson

      We are forever wanting

      to abduct history’s great imaginations,

      safely domesticating them;

   but in so doing,

   we ​cage them

   in intellectual zoos,

square-pegging them

into safe, round holes

of our own digging,

   completely destroying

   their untamed strength,

   denaturing their virility,

      eventually suffocating them

      with the noose

      of our own interpretation.

   The ideas themselves

   cannot be so captured,

   because they are wild and free,

   roaming the universe’s cerebral plains.

All our attempts squeeze

only a single elucidation,

and that, only for a moment,

   itself no more representative

   of the whole than stick figures

   against the wildebeest

   in its natural element.

© 2015 Todd Jenkins