The memory elephant ambles

back to its feeding grounds.

Through the fig trees, it rambles,

through clearings hung with facts needing to be found …

Slowly, precisely, the elephant marches

beside a river mirroring faded faces,

as monkeys swing in the acers’ arches,

Every tear, the elephant returns to its familiar places.

Its meandering pulls me out of the present day:

confused, I am hurled and whirled

through an unending portal, out of the fray.

into an unknown, forgotten world.

Suddenly, in the elephants mind, the temple stones are fused.

The ivy is gone, the undergrowth cleared. The elephant’s amazed,

but then the memory disappears – and temples – and trees. Confused,

it gazed and gazed. At such a loss of habitat, no wonder it was dazed.

The memory elephant is fragile.

Its bones are broken as easily as wood which ages and turns rotten.

It’s wise and noble but not agile.

The only memory elephant might be forgotten.