Watch the scaly beast disembark the children.
This is the ark that Noah would have
Were he acting not from urgency
And according to instruction from an angel advancing a flood,
What Noah would have were he not a compliant man
And well equipped to do the carpentry
But insufficient in imagination to do the wizardry
Is pass the flood to the mind of a bestiary.

Though adopted to the environment of evolving
Strategies of receding ocean,
The beasts that roam this time in admiration
Are creatures of unmolested nature
And, as such, regarded by molesters
Of the habitat bequeathed in the leaving of Mount Ararat
As the sentimental objects of an age of wildness
About the affairs of habitual human beings.
In the deserts of human progress is place,
For Judy to see as I see her,
For installation of sculptured bestiary
Having the power to re-effect
The evolution of human place
And affect the children with re-embarkation.

Fancy a poet flooded with image,
Dire in the shedding of sentimentality,
Stumbling into the old workshop,
Expecting Noah and finding Judy’s multiple crafting.

Tom Gale
2008