NaPoWriMo Day 3: "The Newts"

I am doing the prompt from today's April Poem-A-Day Challenge, as the NaPoWriMo one -- a meandering poem that takes time and in which time passes -- felt like it would take me too long to write well, and I need to be grading.  I like the idea so will save it for another time.

The PAD prompt is to "write an animal poem. The poem could be about an animal. Or it could just mention an animal in passing. Or include an animal in your title and fail to mention the animal once in your poem. Your poem, your rules."

What I wrote is about an animal (well, animals), but ultimately it's about the self, in several different ways. I would have liked to write this in form, quatrains maybe, but time-wise will need to leave that for future revision.

The Newts

Fish, frogs, gerbils, the chipmunk

my uncle won in a giveaway,

the canary, Yellow Keppel,

and my cat Popsy of course.

The list of childhood pets, except

what I am ashamed to mention

even now: the newts.

Why did we even get them?

I can barely imagine them,

little, narrow, dark and shiny,

lacking any discernible personality,

in a shallow tank, pale gravel and water,

kept on my bedroom windowsill

(which now seems a clearly bad idea).

But then somehow I forgot them.

Days later, a week, or was it weeks,

I pulled the curtain back and there they were;

like strips of leather, parings from a shoe-heel,

long and fully dried and dead.

I don’t remember what I thought.

But all my life I have had dreams of it:

the startling horror of something I forgot,

the slow approach, the dread, the lifting,

the peering at what was out of view

turned mummy of itself, irretrievable,

the standing face to face with all of what I am.

--Draft by Anne Myles. Do not quote or cite without permission.