My Garden Is A Zoo comical poem 635 by Angela Lansbury

 My garden is a zoo

It grows and grows and grows 

How dozens of weeds found us

God only knows

We have birds and sqirrels

Often a cat, once a lost dog

A dear little hedgehog

And a toad - or maybe frog

Although the yearly survey

Reveals sad loss of birds

I hear owls and see a woodpecker

My neighbout saw an escaped deer, I heard

Next door both sides throw bread for birds

They kindly throw it out and chuck it all around

I have broken, empty birdboxes instead

Lawn mowing noise and rain lure millions of worms from my ground

I'm glad to say no cockroaches any day

But a wasps' nest, a butterfly and some kind of bee

I don't need a lesson in biology

I've the lifetime of the maggot in every apple on my tree

Apple tree July 2025 by Trevor Sharot. Copyright. 

Sometimes I plan to picnic, or read a book

But a movement in the distance makes me stop warily to look

Like lounge grabbers by hotel pools, I see a sunbathing fox

I retreat to the house, shut windows, kitchen door, patio door's three locks

Every day something dies and something is born

Squirrels burying threatening acorns in small hills in the tripping lawn

A small garden, but, like persistent dodging fleas find, land and breed on my dinner plate

The tinest garden teems with life every dawn.

My garden's like a zoo, breeding endangered creatures

But I am not in a rage

I like to watch my visitors

I'm the biggest attraction, in my cage.

-ends-

I ought to edit this so that every line has the right number of syllables, sounding sweet and neat. But I rather like it as it is, jumping about, in a disjointed, flippant, conversational style, full of asides and jolting, out of control afterthoughts.

Which are my favourite lines? The sunbathing fox. How kiasu, as Singaporeans say, getting ahead of me, fear of missing out, got there first, - like holidaymakers putting towels on loungers around hotel pools at dawn.

I also like the dodging fleas.  The comparison of the garden being small, yet teeming with life, breeding like fleas on leftovers, or even while you are eating, over a dinner plate.

Best of all, the biology lesson from the maggots in the apple tree, a lesson in every apple. As they say, telling me without telling me. 

Praising the lesson, whilst obviously really not pleased about maggots.

And the overall idea of a garden being a zoo, which is well organized with every animal and insect labelled. Boasting, proudly, but revealing that the plants and insects in the garden arrive at random,unplanned, unwanted, over-breeding, escaped, sending the householder into the house like a cage.

I think this is the best thing I've ever written. But I alway think that after every poem. And every book.

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