Keeper
by Ann Harper
oil on canvas
sold
There is a baboon in me clambering-clawed dog-faced yawping a galoot's hunger hairy under the armpits here are the hawk-eyed hankering men here are the blond and blue-eyed women here they hide curled asleep waiting ready to snarl and kill ready to sing and give milk waitingI keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.
O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heartand I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-WhereFor I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.
Carl Sandburg
all images copyright ann harper 2007 ... all rights reserved
