ANIMALS OF THE SAFARI

are migrating
under water.  
Starfish. Sea stars.
Sea of horses. Sea of stars.

Moving up,
under water.
Herds of oxen,
caribou, giraffes
migrate through a blue, manmade channel.
No riverbed.
A concrete, square canal.

Tigers swim upstream,   
underwater, in a jaguar dance.
They become tiger people,
one white, one striped,
and crest up into sky,
toss a tiny mouse,
dangling it
by a thin tail
over a fanged mouth.

Tigers fly above tree-springing ocelots.  
Egrets tip-toe, treading over tree-blue,
blur flying macaws. 
A cave-dark blanket of hyper-shifting bats.
Zebras shift,
an illusion in the pack.

People fly over,
dodging tigers,
in an open arboretum.
A contained biome,
a tiled vestibule,
arched open to skylights.

The water should not be so clear.
The walls are much too clean.
Rubber trees are flourishing quite nicely. 

At the end of the jungle canal
a ladder leads out
to the boundless carnival ―

The driveway full of people
covered in beads and candy-coated jewels.

In the kitchen, someone has put
vegetables
in the dishwasher. 

In the yard,
someone has parked   
a pickup truck

on the roof.