stuffed animals

Poets who anthropomorphize animals remind me of children playing with stuffed animals.

weeds

Milkweed

While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,
I must have looked a long time
Down the corn rows, beyond grass,
The small house,
White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.
I look down now. It is all changed.
Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for
Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes
Loving me in secret.
It is here. At the touch of my hand,
The air fills with delicate creatures
From the other world.

—James Wright

not domesticated

She respected words, treating them like they were wild animals.

dead animals

There were so many dead animals in the poet’s book I began to think he’d missed his calling as a taxidermist.

circus of words

The poem was a nice circus of words, but I couldn't smell the animals nor hear the groan and creak of the trapeze.