Of Elephants and Sorrow

Two poems for my father


"Elephants," you tell my mother,
"kiss, and when one dies, the others
congregate to hold a wake…
They have the largest brain
among land animals…"
The ideas mesh, a web across
a jungle trail, a vacant space.

Elephants, they say, do not forget,
but your mind slips through gaps
in synapses and strands itself
in unsuspected snares and pits.

Childhood's icons chafe against
the changes that erode, efface,
and reconstruct you as before,
indulgent, at your best.

On nights near Christmas, en famille
we'd set out in the old jalopy,
leave the farm in darkness, dousing
lamps that drank blue kerosene;
drive through soft dust to the town,
where Norfolk pines stood
black and straight above the small
main street, festooned with rainbow
lights, then to the beach, where sea
slurred gently over sand, and lamps
on distant headlands blinked.

We'd stroll to where the Rotary Club
drew townspeople to fortune wheels,
and clowns turned open mouths to dodge
white balls, and luck was in for some
on Ambulance and Red Cross stalls.
Gorged on fairy-floss we rode
a carousel of painted steeds,
nauseous from unaccustomed sweets.

At home the frogs croaked hopefully,
we tossed beneath mosquito nets,
the myriad thin whining threats
kept fearfully at bay. Frog-chorus
hollow as a drum gave way to circling
curlew: lost girls in torment or lost tribes,
wounding midnight with their cries.
You slept contented in your bed, dreams
wreathed about your shiny head.

Tonight, rain stings my face
in beads, the dust gives out
familiar scents as parched grass
bristles underfoot across the park.

Stripped of the fragile certainties
that shaped your world,
I mourn my loss.

* * *

Last Rite

As evening falls, the sea's
white breath suspended
above pounding surf;
a point of light
glimpsed fitfully
beyond night's reach.
In place of pebbles
rolling on a shore, a far,
uneasy roar of breakers,
isolated stars…
At dawn three pelicans
ride out, high-prowed,
to fish the estuary.

Prepare the pomegranate seeds,
the tender wheat…


1992