The Penguin

Cotswold Wildlife Park, Burford

It’s all too much. The white rhinoceros,
The common shoveler, the Cuban tree frog.
A whole world and every part of it
a short walk from the tea-room.

Pushchairs. Cornettos.
A basin of blue concrete
and a Humboldt penguin tumbling
in three feet of dirty water.

If only we could slip inside those eyes
and find our way back
to the pack-ice in the Weddell Sea.
Instead we move on to the gibbons.