From The Crib To The Zoo Poem by Mark Heathcote

'Let's go to the Zoo, ' my sisters would ask
I was always quite quiet at best.
But dreamed of keeping a monkey under my vest
He'd peek out occasionally unmasked.

'We didn't do family holidays, often
Father worked and drank a lot.'
A father who smacked and mocked
I regularly wished I were an orphan.

Mother- she was pregnant out of wedlock.
Me, I was then born hidden from view
This as much as far as I knew
Her heart was cut from a sprig of hemlock.

So my grandmother took over the reins,
Leastwise till these two teens wed.
Else back then gossip would've been widespread
Grandmother told me of her own, pains;

How her, own, baby boy fell ill and died
How he slept in the attic where I too was laid
How both became ill and yet, I survived
How pneumonia took him to his grave.

It was then, grandmother, tearfully cried.
My world until then was oversimplified
Changed forever; some confessions are best
Left quietly chambered in your chest, oppressed,

Like a little, small monkey under a boy's vest.
Caged animals have us all mystified:
It's intriguing to see them clearly, distressed
Less wild, but somehow even more dignified.