Category Archives: elephants

by

Poem: 31 / What Fire Prevented

This narrative poem was written in hospital during a chemo session, contemplating God’s sending a perceived “calamity” that might be, in fact, heading off a worse one. Gratitude for every state we find ourselves in, in every condition, is the most open-hearted basis of our being, and seeing the possibility that, not “things could be worse” exactly, but that what He’s sent to us in the way of a difficulty could be forestalling or outright subverting something far graver. This poem is the story metaphor of that contemplation…


1

The circus let out early and the
elephant sat in her cage

Clowns removed their white to their natural
pink or brown underneath

The contortionist stretched out for a
lengthy nap

along his entire length
as normal as anyone supine

Josie the tightrope walker walked between the
caravans puffing on her forbidden

cigarette in the slight haze of this
tropical afternoon

The giraffe’s heads towered above the
caravan roofs and the

village children from afar delighted in their
phantasmal shapes

All is well on the circus grounds
and nothing is afoot

No skullduggery or malfeasance no
shady dealings or larcenous absconding

but only a usual afternoon among these
unusual folk for whom a

nice afternoon off though somewhat
rare is a welcome and

calming respite to an otherwise
irregular and certainly offbeat if not

downright
bohemian life

2

When the fire broke out
the lion was asleep

What no one knew was that an
entire angelic order had been

assigned to watch over the circus
because of the child born to the Argentinean

trapeze artists who at
the time were picnicking with their

five children at the
edge of the grounds

the saintly baby in a
basket surrounded by birds

A loud crack as the main
tent pole split in two

a great roaring bellow as the canvas
in the main tent caught fire

smoke billowed above the
circus as if phantom hippopotamus

herds were riding down the sky
though on each billow an

angel rode to keep the
flames from harming a single soul

as everyone awoke or ran in their
panic to the water buckets

always at the ready for such
emergencies

Cries and shouts of the
circus performers and crew

pulling animal wagons away
calling to each other through

chugging billows of
brown smoke

3

The flames resembled leaping lions
jabbing snakes

relentless in their attacks and hot
counterattacks

a vicious darkness where there’d
been ebullient light and

tuba oompahs and flight through hoops

but while Hell seems to have
opened up at this happy circus

what’s fascinating is the
angelic squadrons fanning

out in the unseen to save each soul
suddenly making real the

feats of daring and aerial acrobatics
that outlined by flames now become so

earthbound

Billions of angels came in phalanges and filed in
troops between the fire and all the

people and beasts

They tumbled through belches of smoke
and flew in the rafters’ heights as well as

at the low level of wagon wheels and
floppy clowns

combating sheets of fire with their
angelic ice

lessening its outraged effects
against the innocent joys of

brightly painted matter
suddenly vulnerable to the

disease of burning

for that one precious baby destined to
shine in the eternal worlds as

saint and messenger among us

same as that spot of perfection in our
bodies unscorched by any

outbreak and surrounded by
angelic air invulnerable to its

flames

That sea of light in the
clenched ball of darkness that is

our mortal being
doomed to incinerate in its

brightness

that flying baby in the
wild circus of our being

angelically protected
that leads us into God’s

cool asbestos atmospheres beyond all
conflagration

the leaping sweet roar of it made more
agile than even death’s

deep earthly plodding

4

Josie sat on a coil of
uncharred rope and unburnt pulleys

and noticed how frayed the
rope was in places and how

close it was to breaking

The clowns went through the
unharmed remains of their

dressing room tents and noticed
the old tins of clown white’s ingredients

included traces of poisonous lead

The saved heap of nets the flames missed
showed signs of rot

The trapeze artists with the saintly
child saw their old but unscorched rigging

had been about to shred
as they coughed their way to where they

lay in ropey zigzags across the dirt

But the old main tent was flakes of
ashen canvas

The wooden center rings were black dust

The lion lay asleep on his huge paws

The elephant gazed through slow wise
eyes at his fifth disaster since

Madras

as the circus performers thanked their
God that what He threatened them with

saved them from worse calamities

and another day dawned and the
circus put itself back together

and moved on
______________________________________________
6/10-11/12 (from Down at the Deep End)

by

Poem: 5 / Seeing the Scaffold


Seeing the scaffold at the end of the road
or a steamroller coming toward you

or a herd of elephants bearing down
or looking into the maw of a tiger

on your morning stroll

his teeth and back of throat
and his greater existence

about to surround you
and all around you palm trees

sway and water still
rushes to its destination and

birds fly into branches and
continue to sing in fact

the whole universe is now a
polyphonic birdsong some trilling

happily some crooning mournfully
light playing its kaleidoscope patterns

around you accelerating and
brightening in gorgeous flashes

and the music of the spheres has finally
broken through the clouds

into your ears
as your

heart’s about to break
and death take you

and the procession of saints can be
glimpsed over the hill

for you to join at the end
to continue on

past this world’s din
_____________________
5/15/12 (from Down at the Deep End, in progress)

by

Poem: 2 / Angelic Shoes


The shoemaker saw that
angelic shoes miraculously

surrounded his feet
a perfect fit

The hoop flyer soared up and through
with the greatest of ease

the whole sky

opening its curtains so she could
land on her feet on the

other side in a
sea of clouds

The flautist floated his
breath through his flute and out the

open end
a whole symphony flowed

backed by a thousand-person choir in
blue tuxedos and flouncy blue gowns

There’s really no end to the
miracles once just a little one comes into focus

Once we see everything fluttering its
miraculous wings

elephants finally look down at us from their
domed heights with

benign approval having always
seen things this way from the

start

Dust rises as they move off and as its
dirt flakes fall back to earth they

spell out jungle scriptures of such
monumental delicacy whole

populations close their books and
act on their advice of

elegantly symmetrical crystals and
the generous boon given us of

atomic structures by God the Most
Generous Giver

until even the most inert ones on earth
are seen to be dancing
________________________________________________________
5/11/12 (from Down at the Deep End, in progress)

by

Poem: Because


Because he began as a baby and will end as an old man
because the rose has a stem and isn’t all the way rose
because the looming building casts a long shadow the squat
building a short
and we don’t really see the faces of insects the way
probably other insects see them
because there’s a quantum gulf between the
human world and the insect one
and probably a flea doesn’t appreciate the difference in
personality or spiritual quality between one
juicy arm and another in quite the same way
we do (although they may)
and because horses with wings are rare to the point of
impossible and flying ladders of shiny bronze that
take you to the higher heavens rung by rung
are more an apt metaphor than something you can
pick up at your local hardware store
and because even the highest mountains come at
last to a peak
and the deepest ocean rifts hit bottom after all
then we can begin to appreciate not only the
utterly complete pattern of things but also the
occasional breaks in the pattern as when for
example a building in a forest fire isn’t
burnt to the ground an elephant is
united with a boon companion after more than
thirty years apart in their respective
circuses or zoos and their trunks entwine in loving recognition
or a true cascade of purest love bursts in
cavalcades of purest splendor from seemingly the
marrow of our bones in a hot flood throughout the
entire system showing us the loveliest connections between
mouse and rainbow paper-weight and
train wreck door slam and baby born as the
whole cycle repeats itself in a new key enough to
shiver the deepest sleeper awake and the most
delicate moth to suddenly have the
courage of a tiger in sipping the most
inaccessible nectar
______________________
(from Blood Songs, unpublished)