zoo tycoon 

my uncle built a zoo.
night by night he hunched 
peering into polarized glass.
the desktop computer humming 
with the burden of architecture.
he selected the specific stones 
for each & every walkway. bright white
steps of an animal cathedral.
he kept the gates closed. 
the empty zoo blank & free of breathing.
fish tanks sprouting from the grass,
their kelp whispering towards
future sharks. from the staircase
i watched my uncle, his figure
silhoutted before the screen's light.
the soft click & scuff of the mouse 
rolling back & forth. 
he was almost completely still,
so focused on building the zoo. 
i was maybe ten & i built zoos too
but nothing like this. i wanted 
to ask him to show me all the details
but i didn't want to disturb his work 
so i watched from afar when i should have been
in bed. we all should be in bed 
more often. getting out of bed leads to 
building zoos & building zoos leads to
cages. planting trees along a walkway
with the movement of his fingers
i wondered what it would be like
to be a god. to hover above the earth 
& construct something intricate.
god laying the sidewalks & god 
rising blocks of earth for steps 
& god drawing invisible lines 
for each of our cages. in the game,
sometimes my animals would escape,
roaming with aimless fury towards 
the corner of the map. i have always 
been walking along the corners of maps.
that night, after watching my uncle's zoo
i will go up onto the roof & watch cars pass.
i will feel god-like yet precarious.
imagining my finger clicking on the forehads 
of cars to pick them up. the cars as 
animals in my zoo. the zoo is larger & larger 
each day, i'm talking about my uncle's zoo
or maybe also my own. he gets closer & closer
to letting the humans loose 
on his creation. he mutters hapily to himself.
on the roof, i kick a shingle into the grass.
i almost slip & i promise myself to stop being 
so dangerous. in that moment my uncle
clicks to open the gates. the whole computer freezes
pixel on pixel. currents of drowing code
frozen in a moment. the people are full of 
staggering. they try to enter but just end up
twitching in the gate. the screen goes still.
he clicks & clicks, first madly & then slowly,
once every few minutes. no response.
a fragment of the zoo gazing back at him.
before going to bed he restarts the computer.
by then i am asleep, building cages in my dreams.
he is finding he zoo submerged 
in an impenetrable void. the file emptied 
of walkways & animals & sculpture. 
does he weep? does he take the keyboard
& hurl it to the floor? i will never know.
somewhere the zoo is humming itself to sleep.
somewhere the animals have learned to feed 
off isolation, pulling the winks of stars down
from a blank lake in the depths.
i'll pick the shingle up from the yard in the morning.